When I was five, I had endured a total of ten surgeries on my hips and my left hand. I was born with congenital bilateral hip dysplasia (and if you google it, you'll probably get a lot of search results about it in retrievers) and "Streeters syndrome" (a condition that caused my left hand to be webbed together after the circulation was cut off, not allowing it to develop properly).

At the age of five, I had my last invasive surgery. The surgery, however, rendered me to a wheelchair for the next handful of months. Even after my body-cast came off, I couldn't walk.