At the age of 19, the day after I graduated high school, I moved to a place where it snowed, and I became a massage therapist. With this job, all I needed were my hands and my massage table by my side and I could go anywhere. For the first time in my life, I felt free, independent, and completely in control of my life.

If you want something bad enough and you work hard enough, anything's possible.

I've never wanted sympathy votes in anything I do in my life.

You don't always have to have the most amazing story. It's learning to share the story you have that counts.

I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.

If you want something bad enough and you work hard enough, anything's possible.

I was 19 years old, and I felt like I had the flu one day. Within 24 hours, I was in the hospital on life support, and I was given less than a 2 percent chance of living. It took five days for the doctors to find out that I had contracted bacterial meningitis.

I feel that losing both my legs was a blessing. It was meant to happen to me: I wouldn't have had the opportunity to touch so many lives in such a positive way.

I got this second chance at life, and I live it.

That's really what the Paralympics is about: these amazing athletes and this technology that's allowing them to reach their full potential.

In my dreams, whatever I am doing, I look down to see if I have prosthetics. It sets my time frame in my dream, I think. I'd have these dreams that I am running and launching myself, and I look down and see that I have prosthetics. I have a lot of those, where I do great, amazing things with my prosthetics.

You don't have to be positive all the time.

My dad gave me one of his kidneys.