'It's my happy place': Cary double amputee gearing up to compete in Paralympics
Posted August 6, 2021 5:14 p.m. EDT
Updated August 6, 2021 7:58 p.m. EDT
As the Summer Olympics wind down, local athletes are gearing up for the Paralympics. One of the Tokyo-bound competitors living the Triangle is 24-year-old Morgan Stickney, a champion freestyle swimmer.
At 14 years old, Stickney ranked in the top 20 nationally for the mile freestyle. She was aiming to someday compete in the Olympics as an able-bodied athlete.
"I was on my way to morning practice when I was just walking on the pool deck and all of a sudden, it felt like I was stepping on a sharp rock," recalled Stickney.
A small bone near the ball of her foot had become badly inflamed.
"After eight months, it never went away," said Stickney.
It never went away, even after surgery to remove the bone.
But she never stopped swimming.
"I would do one-legged start, and in the pool, I would just do the suck it up kind of thing," said Stickney.
Doctors kept prescribing her painkillers as years passed.
By the time she began taking pre-med classes, she wanted to be a doctor herself but the painkillers had her in a fog.
"I would study 60 to 80 hours a week, and not even exaggerating, I would go take a test and forget everything because of the opioids," said Stickney.
Stickney said something had to give.
"Bones just kept dying and tissue, and they had no idea why," she said. "So I eventually ended up getting a really bad infection, and we had no other choice but to amputate the leg below the knee."
Stickney had her leg amputated in 2018. But she still had Olympic dreams. Only now, having lost her left leg, she began training for the Paralympics.
She became a national paraswimming champion.
"I was training for Tokyo at that point," said Stickney.
Then, Stickney said, the unthinkable happened.
"I hopped three steps after getting out of the cold tub, and my foot just shattered," she said.
Stickney felt the same pain she had in her left leg all those years before.
Doctors determined she had a rare vascular disease that made her leg bones as soft as marshmallows. Seventeen months after losing her left leg, she lost her right.
"When I first lost both of my legs, I used to tell my parents all the time, 'Why couldn't I have been born this way? Why did I have to go through everything I went through?'" Stickney said.
Yet, as a double amputee, Morgan Stickney qualified for the Tokyo Paralympics in 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle.
A year ago, she moved to Cary from her native New Hampshire to train at the Triangle Aquatic Center.
"When I'm in the water, people aren't like, 'Oh my gosh, that girl has no legs.' I'm not Morgan the amputee. I'm just Morgan. It's my happy place and my home," said Stickney.
She lost her legs, but Stickney said her foundation is as strong as ever.
"I still live every single day. I have to be grateful for what I have," she added.
Stickney is studying to become a pediatric oncologist.
The Paralympics begin in Tokyo on Aug. 24.
