Today we have Mike Laughlin who is Canada's only above knee amputee firefighter! He has such a remarkable story and you will not want to miss this one. He is a two time major crash and trauma survivor from the Kingston, Ontario area!
He has a knack for adrenaline fuelled sports including 4 wheeling, snowmobiling, dirt biking, and riding his Harley!
As a farm boy from Joyceville, Mike Laughlin thought he was invincible. “Growing up I threw hay, played every sport imaginable, and drove my dirt bike hard and fast,” he says, “but I never broke a bone in my body until my first accident.”
Mike is a two-time survivor of traumatic injury. The first, a snowmobile accident on Loughborough Lake in the winter of 2007, resulted in his left leg being snapped at the femur, “dangling like rubber.”
“When I finally made it to the Emergency Department at KGH that night,” says Mike. “I didn’t know the hospital would be home for the next month, or that I would leave with so much metal: a titanium femur, a titanium kneecap, 33 pins and screws holding my tibia, fibula, knee and femur together, a titanium forearm and 11 screws holding that together.”
Nearly ten years later, in June 2016, Mike found himself fighting for his life again on Loughborough Lake when a deer unexpectedly darted in front of his motorcycle. “I remember the sound of the muffler scraping the ground, the feeling of the back tire hitting the gravel shoulder and the moment she just shot out from under me.
“It’s hard to describe all the thoughts that go through your mind when you’re lying in a ditch, with a broken body.” says Mike. “My instincts as a firefighter took over. I flipped the Harley off of me.” When he looked down, Mike’s right leg was gone. “My tibia and fibula were in the ground like lawn darts. I threw my helmet up on the road so a passing car might see me. I made a tourniquet, pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed my fire department.”
Social Media for Mike Laughlin:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firefighteramp/
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