From Paralympics to Prosthetics in Space - John McFalls extraordinary Journey

00:00:00: Without that technology, I would not have been able to get to where I got to and would not be here today.

00:00:14: Hi everyone, my name is Ranga Yogeshwar.

00:00:17: Welcome to Taste of Bionics, brought to you by Otto Bock.

00:00:22: In this podcast, we explore how humans and technology are increasingly merging and how innovation is redefining mobility and the quality of life.

00:00:35: We dive into the world of prosthetics, orthotics and exoskeletons, not just as medical devices, but as an ablas of entirely new possibilities.

00:00:50: And today's episode gets personal.

00:00:54: Together with our guests, we'll get to the bottom of questions like, how does it feel to lose a leg?

00:01:02: Why is running more than just sport, especially with a prosthesis?

00:01:07: And how do you design a prosthetic that works in space?

00:01:14: To help us find answers, we're joined by someone who truly embodies the intersection of science, sport and space.

00:01:22: John McFall.

00:01:24: He's a medical doctor.

00:01:26: Paralympic medalist and the first astronaut with a prosthetic limp.

00:01:31: John, welcome.

00:01:33: It's a great pleasure to have you with us.

00:01:36: Hi, Ranga.

00:01:37: It's great to be here.

00:01:38: So nice to meet you as well.

00:01:40: Yes.

00:01:40: First of all, John, we are not speaking with each other and you are sitting in the UK.

00:01:47: Now, you are sitting in a reach search center, which is not so far from my place.

00:01:55: Tell me, where are you right now?

00:01:58: Yeah, I'm just down the road from you, Ranga, actually.

00:02:01: I'm in Cologne.

00:02:02: So I'm at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, which is on the DLR campus on the southeast of the city, right by the Cologne Bonn Airport.

00:02:11: And I live in Bonn with my wife and three children.

00:02:14: And I've been there for a couple of years now.

00:02:17: And we certainly will talk about, well... how it is to be an astronaut to run through all these trainings.

00:02:26: But I would like to

00:02:27: start with your

00:02:27: personal journey because naturally our audience wants to know who is John McFall if they perhaps don't know you yet.

00:02:37: And I would like to start with your very special story.

00:02:43: You were nineteen.

00:02:45: driving a motorcycle in Thailand and then something terrible happened.

00:02:50: Tell us more.

00:02:53: Yeah, I was always a pretty inquisitive and adventurous guy.

00:02:58: When you're traveling in Southeast Asia, what better way to go and explore than getting on a motorcycle and going around?

00:03:08: Just on this one occasion, a nineteen-year-old boy, being a nineteen-year-old boy as they do, maybe riding this motorcycle a little bit too fast, I was actually down on the island of Kosmui going to see some of the sites out there and I was coming up to a corner.

00:03:26: I was coming into this corner, something just didn't feel right.

00:03:29: I felt like I was coming into this corner too fast.

00:03:31: I don't know whether the brakes weren't working properly and I was trying to slow down but couldn't slow down.

00:03:35: But it got to a critical time coming into this corner where I was losing control of the bike and I knew that I had to do something about it.

00:03:43: In that moment, I instinctively put my right leg out as the bike was leaning to the right side to stabilize myself as I was going around the corner.

00:03:54: Although relatively slow speeds of sort of forty, fifty kilometers an hour, putting your leg out at that sort of speed led to a massive injury on my right leg.

00:04:06: Actually, knowing what I know now, I had what's called an open dislocation where the of my knee where the femur came straight out the skin of my thigh and the rest of my lower leg went out to the side and I damaged some blood vessels in the process.

00:04:22: and it happened to me actually with a South African guy who was traveling with me and luckily enough he was able to flag down a passing pickup truck and they scooped me off the road and chucked me in the back of this pickup truck and I met up with him sometime after the accident, after I was gone through some of my rehabilitation.

00:04:41: And we caught up about it and reflected on the experience.

00:04:45: And I remember him very vividly saying to me, yeah, John, mate, it was like something out of a horror movie.

00:04:50: The back of this pickup truck was just sloshing around with blood.

00:04:54: It was an absolute nightmare.

00:04:56: And thankfully, they got me to the closest hospital in time enough to really, in the first instance, save my life, you know, stop me from bleeding to death.

00:05:06: And then I went through this process of having a limb with no blood supply to the lower parts, which they couldn't save.

00:05:14: I had a very, very urgent operation, which unfortunately wasn't able to save the blood supply to the lower leg.

00:05:21: And I ended up having it amputated, probably, I'm not a hundred percent sure of how the timeline played out, but probably a couple of days after the accident, once I was stable enough and well enough to be flown up to Bangkok from Cosmoy.

00:05:36: When I arrived in Bangkok, not long after arriving, I had the amputation done there.

00:05:40: I mean, this is really totally traumatic.

00:05:44: If I just imagine age nineteen, your life just, you know, before you, was there a moment, I mean, this amputation took place where I imagined John you lying in a hospital bed and literally realizing, OK, I have lost my right leg.

00:06:06: I knew.

00:06:07: Just before I was going to go to have surgery, I knew that really that was the only option.

00:06:12: So I kind of went into surgery knowing that I was going to wake up as an amputee.

00:06:16: It was just a question of what level of amputee I was going to wake up.

00:06:19: My dad had flown over from the UK and met me on my journey up to Bangkok.

00:06:25: And we'd had a very, very frank and honest discussion before we went into theatre.

00:06:30: But it's very, very difficult to explain that initial Realization that that awakening that that that moment you look down at yourself as a completely new Person that you're good that that's the shape you're going to be hopefully for the rest of your life.

00:06:53: But there's this this new shape this new physical identity that legs gone.

00:06:58: and Yeah, it was.

00:07:01: it was quite a surreal moment looking down Towards the end of the bed and seeing No shape in the lower part of my leg on the right hand side and the bed clothes, the blanket on the bed was just lying on the mattress, no leg there.

00:07:18: And that was quite an intense moment.

00:07:22: I think it doesn't sink in right at that time.

00:07:26: You notice it and go, okay, this is what I got.

00:07:30: And then you mentally process things as the days go on.

00:07:40: But this is naturally also a crucial moment because, well, your life, your life expectations, everything you wanted to do suddenly changes.

00:07:51: And what is the moment, you know, where on one side I could imagine you become totally depressive because you just say, okay, I lost my life in a certain way.

00:08:03: And then to all the same sort of realize, okay, No, let's look forward and be positive.

00:08:12: I mean, this is something which I imagine is crucial and was crucial to your future life.

00:08:22: Yeah, absolutely.

00:08:22: And you know what, Ranga?

00:08:25: When I reflect on it, it really wasn't a conscious thing.

00:08:28: It was almost something I felt like I did not have control of.

00:08:32: How I navigated this journey going forward, I... I don't think initially I had a great deal of control in what I did.

00:08:43: It was very reactionary.

00:08:45: It was a very innate response that came from in here.

00:08:51: Initially, what I remember is some very, very intense outpourings of grief, some real moments where just the floodgates would open and I would cry and sob and be really, really upset, and then finding that very cathartic.

00:09:07: and being able to move on to the next step, whether it be having a chat with my dad, certainly in the very early days, the first few days after surgery, and then with friends and family, and then over the early years.

00:09:20: But a huge part, actually, for me was finding purpose, finding interest, finding something that I enjoyed doing, and that sort of became... my energy and my focus and my vehicle for rehabilitation.

00:09:37: Being busy and continuing to do the things that gave me pleasure before I lost my leg.

00:09:44: But at the beginning, naturally, you had to learn to walk again.

00:09:51: I mean, this was the question of prosthetics, of rehab and so on.

00:09:56: What was that for a phase?

00:09:57: I mean, the first time you put on an artificial leg.

00:10:02: I mean, just describe what is this, what is going on there?

00:10:08: Oh, Ranga, I was so impatient, which is probably, I'm probably still a little bit impatient these days as well, but I remember back then being quite impatient because of the The damage that I had sustained to my residual limb had this big wound on my stump where my femur had come out.

00:10:25: It took some time for that to heal.

00:10:27: So although I was back in the UK and I was in the hospital where I was going to be learning to walk again, I couldn't actually have my first proper prosthesis fitted because my stump wasn't healed enough to take it.

00:10:41: But I remember.

00:10:44: I remember the first time I put a prosthesis on and it was phenomenal to be vertical.

00:10:53: Again, it was phenomenal to be upright.

00:10:57: It was daunting because you had to learn to master this new piece of technology, understand how it works and understand how you're going to interface with it and get it to do what you aspire to do.

00:11:11: But once I spent my first day or so on it, I was ready to explore how it was going to serve me and what I wanted to achieve.

00:11:22: And I wanted to walk well.

00:11:25: I didn't really want to walk with a limp.

00:11:27: I was very conscious about that from the beginning.

00:11:30: I wanted to walk as well as I could and I would walk up and down in front of the mirror, making sure that my shoulders were level, that I wasn't lifting my hip as I was walking and trying to walk as symmetrically as possible.

00:11:44: And being young and fit and active, I think that was a real bonus for me.

00:11:50: And from there, I was just able to progress and challenge myself and explore my new life as an amputee.

00:11:58: If you think of the prosthesis, I don't know how this works.

00:12:02: I mean, they just came up with one, or did you have a choice of models?

00:12:08: So was this a standard prosthesis or already... Did you have the liberty to choose?

00:12:17: Yeah, so interestingly, being British and having the National Health Service, the NHS, there is not a lot of choice.

00:12:25: What you do have is you have advocates.

00:12:28: So the prosthetist who was looking after me and the team looking after me at Roehampton in London, the home of probably one of the UK's most famous amputees, which is a guy called Douglas Bader, who was a fighter pilot in the Second World War, who lost both his legs in a crash and then still flew again in the war as a Spitfire pilot.

00:12:50: I was actually rehabilitated at the center named after him, the Douglas Bader Rehabilitation Sensor.

00:12:57: But the prosthetists and the team looking after me, they tried to get me a prosthetic knee and a prosthetic setup for an active user, for a young active user.

00:13:09: In the first instance, Yeah, it was okay.

00:13:12: It probably didn't have the range of functionality.

00:13:17: It didn't have the stance phase control that I really wanted to start with.

00:13:22: And so it was quite an interesting experience learning about that.

00:13:26: But yeah, one thing about the NHS, I guess, is you don't have a huge amount of choice in what sort of hardware you get.

00:13:33: I was very much in the hands of trusting the clinicians who were looking after me.

00:13:40: But I'm sure it was a good prosthesis.

00:13:43: I myself, I was engaged in mine victims in Cambodia.

00:13:49: And there you see many very heavy sort of stiff prosthesis.

00:13:55: So I think so this model was better.

00:13:58: And it had to become better.

00:14:01: because let's go on in the story.

00:14:04: The year after, in two thousand one, you started a degree in sports and exercise science at Swansea University.

00:14:12: So first of all, as an amputee, I mean, why do you start sports?

00:14:19: I mean, I could have imagined, well, now you study mathematics or something else.

00:14:24: Why sports?

00:14:27: Well, I already had a place at university to do sports and exercise science before I had my accident.

00:14:35: And then when I had my accident, I just had deferred it for a year.

00:14:39: So until I was back up on my feet and able to start university again.

00:14:45: But the reason why I chose sports and exercise science was at the time of choosing a degree, actually what I was planning to do was join the army.

00:14:54: And I didn't really care what degree I had because I just needed to get a degree and then I was going to go and join the army after university.

00:15:01: So I thought, well, what do I like?

00:15:02: Well, I love science.

00:15:05: I love sport, so why not do sports science, which is why I chose that.

00:15:09: Not really appreciating what it might lead me to from a career point of view in the future, which is maybe why I sort of went down the path I did, where I then went on to do a masters as well, to buy myself a little bit more time and try to understand what it was I was going to do with this education.

00:15:27: So yeah, that's really why I chose it.

00:15:31: Now, the interesting part is, well, you have everyday exercises, the normal day, and now running, for example, on a prosthetic knee and foot designed primarily for walking in a standard way seems to be challenging.

00:15:49: So you had some experiences.

00:15:52: I read from catastrophic hydraulic cylinder explosions.

00:15:58: Perhaps you can walk us into this aspect of a prosthesis.

00:16:03: Yeah, it was really important for me early on in my rehabilitation to re-establish my confidence and my sense of identity.

00:16:13: It was really important for me to run again because running had been such an important part of my life and I found such joy and reward in running.

00:16:21: Really, that's what I wanted to do again as an amputee.

00:16:23: So I taught myself to run again.

00:16:26: And actually, this was on.

00:16:29: It wasn't actually on an autobock prosthesis that I was on at the time.

00:16:32: It was on a competitor's prosthesis, but it was just a simple hydraulic cylinder in a frame with a normal foot.

00:16:39: I taught myself to run on this, but it's not designed for running.

00:16:45: I started going to training sessions at my local athletics club, and I would do these sprints down the track.

00:16:53: And I would maybe get occasionally twenty, thirty metres into the sprint, then all of a sudden when the knee reached terminal extension, the force was just so great that it would just pull the piston out of the cylinder and hydraulic fluid would go all over the track.

00:17:12: And that would be the end of that knee unit.

00:17:14: That would be the end of that cylinder.

00:17:15: And I was left with basically a completely flaccid knee that was not really much good.

00:17:21: And that coupled with a normal everyday walking foot.

00:17:27: Learning to run on that prosthesis was hard work.

00:17:30: It was clumsy, it was cumbersome, it was awkward.

00:17:34: But at the same time, it was running for me.

00:17:37: It was as close to running that I had been since I had my accident.

00:17:42: And yeah, so I would regularly call my prosthetist up in London because I was down in Wales and my prosthetist was up in London and I would say, Tom, I'm really sorry I've broken another cylinder.

00:17:56: In the end, he shipped a box of maybe eight to ten cylinders that were functional, but they were second-hand ones that if I had an explosion, I would just be able to take it out and put a new one back in again.

00:18:12: These are the days from actually working.

00:18:14: Repair

00:18:14: your own leg.

00:18:17: I worked in a bike shop.

00:18:19: I worked in a bike shop in Swansea at the time and so I would often be found out the back in the workshop servicing my leg and I would just take it apart and put a new cylinder in and stuff.

00:18:30: Back in the days when the construction of these was so simple that it was quite easy to do yourself and me being a pretty practical guy who likes fixing things and solving problems, that was what I used to do.

00:18:47: Well, you slowly realize that this is not one size or one model fits it all.

00:18:53: So you need different prostheses depending on what you do.

00:18:59: So now, well, how many artificial legs do you have?

00:19:05: Do you have a collection?

00:19:07: I have a few, but I'm on.

00:19:09: really the prosthesis that I use day to day now.

00:19:15: is capable of doing so much that really the only additional prosthesis I need is for running.

00:19:22: And that's just because the biomechanics are running.

00:19:24: And it's not necessarily to do with the knee, it's more to do with the foot and the capability of the running blade to store and return this elastic energy that the foot on a day-to-day prosthesis is not capable of doing.

00:19:40: I have a simple mechanical prosthesis for specifically mountain biking because I don't want to damage my day-to-day processes because when I go mountain biking, it gets covered in muddy water and dirt and stuff.

00:19:56: To help preserve it and make it last longer, I tend to just use this purely mechanical version.

00:20:03: I also have been using a purely mechanical one for diving because going down to depths of ten meters or so, Although my day-to-day GDMX-IV is waterproof, it's not certified to be waterproof at that depth.

00:20:21: We'll

00:20:22: go into the details of these prostheses, I think so.

00:20:27: But let's, for this moment, just... Look at running because you mentioned the running blade.

00:20:35: So I believe this is a curved carbon fiber prosthesis acting a bit like a spring.

00:20:41: And this is, I believe, fantastic for sprinting.

00:20:46: So this is a crucial, well, prosthesis because you went on in sports to run in a very, well, professional way.

00:20:58: Tell us more about that.

00:21:01: Yeah, I think my prosthetist in the UK eventually got fed up with the phone calls of me breaking my my leg and so actually on the NHS at that time we We built our first or my first running prosthesis and I think as far as I'm aware it was probably the first running prosthesis made in the National Health Service at that time and this was in about two thousand and three.

00:21:26: and I remember I took delivery of this prosthesis in the autumn of two thousand and three and I went to my local athletics track and I tried it out for the first time.

00:21:36: And this was this was actually specifically designed for sprinting.

00:21:39: It had some some spikes on the bottom.

00:21:43: And I remember I put it on and I jogged around the track and I could not believe how natural it felt compared to how clumsy I had been in this this day prosthesis that I had been learning to run in.

00:21:58: And I could not believe how normal this felt.

00:22:00: And it was actually a very emotional experience.

00:22:02: And I remember getting back in my car after this and sitting in my car in the car park and I cried.

00:22:07: I cried because it felt like running.

00:22:11: It felt like what I remember running feeling like.

00:22:14: And that was a huge step for me because I think I knew at that point that I had back what I wanted to get.

00:22:21: I knew I was going to be okay.

00:22:22: I knew that I had running back.

00:22:24: And once I had this running prosthesis, I was then in a position to explore where I could take running.

00:22:29: And I worked with some agencies down in Wales, some sports agencies, national sports agencies, who gave me access to Paralympic Sports and took me to my first competitions as an amputee sprinter.

00:22:45: And it really went from there and very quickly.

00:22:51: became aware that I was very competitive within Europe and within the world as a Paralympic sprinter, as an APT.

00:23:00: And that really excited me.

00:23:01: And it was an opportunity that I was like, this is fantastic.

00:23:04: What an opportunity to have.

00:23:05: And it was something that I wanted to pursue to see how far I could take.

00:23:09: And it took me all the way to Beijing.

00:23:12: Well, if I look at your track record, Just for those listening, you won silver in hundred meters and bronze in two hundred meters at the two thousand six IPC world championships.

00:23:26: You were world champion in the one hundred and two hundred meters at the two thousand seven.

00:23:32: Eva's World Games, you won the two thousand seven Paralympic World Cup in the two hundred meters as well as picking up silver in the one hundred meters.

00:23:41: and then The great moment in Beijing, you are a bronze medalist in the one hundred meters at the two thousand eight Paralympic Games.

00:23:51: So what a track record.

00:23:55: Yeah, you seem to be quite fast.

00:24:00: Yeah, I was OK.

00:24:02: I was I was OK.

00:24:03: Ironically, Ranga, ironically, I'm not.

00:24:06: I'm not really a sprinter.

00:24:10: You know.

00:24:10: morphologically and genetically, I'm not built like a sprinter.

00:24:14: I'm much more of a middle distance, long distance guy.

00:24:16: So nowadays, if I go for a run, I go out for ten to fifteen K, that's sort of the distances I want to do.

00:24:26: And that's what I enjoyed running beforehand.

00:24:29: But the issue was, if I wanted to compete as a runner at a Paralympic level, sprinting, unfortunately, was the only event that was available to me because they weren't the number of amputees populating lots and lots of different events.

00:24:44: And so, yeah, sprinting was the only thing I could compete in.

00:24:50: I think so.

00:24:50: This is a bit high-nosed, John, you know, claiming I'm not a sprinter, but you come back with a bronze medal.

00:24:59: I'm also not a sprinter.

00:25:00: I don't think so.

00:25:01: I would get a bronze medal.

00:25:03: But this sport seems to be something very important because physical activity naturally also has a feedback on your mental state.

00:25:14: So if you slowly realize, OK, I can sprint, I can do all these activities.

00:25:20: I think this is crucial, but this also means you need the right equipment.

00:25:29: Absolutely.

00:25:30: And I could not have got to where I got to without the right technology.

00:25:34: And it was an absolute game changer.

00:25:37: And I remember once I, when I discovered the auto-bock blades as well, because my first blade was not an auto-bock blade.

00:25:44: And then in two thousand and five, I switched over to auto-bock.

00:25:49: It was fantastic.

00:25:50: It was fabulous.

00:25:51: And without that technology, I would not have been able to get to where I got to and would not be here today.

00:25:58: So, Autobock, I believe, yeah, they are high-tech.

00:26:03: or is it more the dialogue between Autobock and you, so to sort of have an equipment which is tailor-made for you?

00:26:13: It was a little bit of being in the right place at the right time, Ranga.

00:26:17: I remember I'd just competed in, I think it was the European Championships in Espoo in Finland in two thousand and five.

00:26:25: that was my my first major international competition and i think i wanna bronze.

00:26:31: Bronze there in the two hundred meters perhaps i think it was and i'd come forth in the in the in the one hundred meters and i met a guy called kevin haney.

00:26:40: this is when i've you know i i had known heinrich.

00:26:45: Now by this point heinrich pop off.

00:26:46: i've met him and we've been talking stuff and he was he's a great grind you know awesome advocate for.

00:26:52: for Parasport, and I met this guy, Kevin Harnie, who also worked for Otto Bock.

00:26:57: We had a chat, and I was very interested in the design of the blade that Otto Bock had.

00:27:04: It had this difference in the forefoot spring, this curve, which changed the dynamics of the blade, and it really showed me that they were interested in understanding and improving and optimizing the running blade, not just making a carbon fiber spring, but actually saying, okay, well, how can we make it even better?

00:27:25: How can we, we want to understand sprinting, we want to understand this and make a blade that mechanically is superior.

00:27:36: And they offered, Kevin Harney offered to let me try a blade and so together with Kevin, I took this blade.

00:27:45: And I took it to Dorsal Orthopaedic, who were a private prosthetics clinic, who actually is now an Ottobock Patient Care Centre in the UK.

00:27:52: And they made me a specific running prosthesis on this setup and stuff.

00:27:58: And I worked with them.

00:27:59: And yeah, it was great.

00:28:02: And that was really where my relationship with Ottobock from a running blade and running prosthesis point of view took off.

00:28:09: So in other words, by what I also understand, there is some sort of a balance between the tech of a prosthesis on one side and the, well, the sheer muscle power, the human aspect.

00:28:23: This is a very provocative question.

00:28:24: Do you win because your prosthesis is better or because you're a better sprinter?

00:28:30: I mean, you are not a sprinter, as we heard.

00:28:34: Yeah, and I think a really great word for this, Ranga, is harmony.

00:28:40: And this really applies more so to unilateral amputees than it does to double leg amputees.

00:28:47: This concept of harmony, when you're a single leg amputee, you're really governed by being symmetrical and being in harmony with your prosthesis.

00:28:56: You can only go as fast as your able-bodied leg goes as well.

00:28:59: So you don't want it to stiff, you don't want it to soft, you don't want it too long, you don't want it too short.

00:29:05: And this was really important.

00:29:07: And I think in the early days, I actually found the same or the equivalent category of blade in the Osso blade, which is the other manufacturer.

00:29:17: I found it too stiff.

00:29:18: Equivalently, it just didn't have quite the same response and feel that the Otto Bock blade and that was the Otto Bock in that blade in that context was preferable to me.

00:29:31: So I think for single leg amputees, you really have to concentrate on balance.

00:29:36: And it's been really interesting to learn where technology has gone since I was competing and where it is now.

00:29:43: And actually, athletes are using even softer running blades.

00:29:47: So they're still keeping them relatively long, but they're using a slightly softer blade to really kind of spend more time in stance phase as opposed to getting through stance phase too quickly.

00:29:58: And they're playing around with the mechanical alignment of it, so making a slightly longer forefoot whilst putting the knee slightly behind the hips or slightly more towards the posterior hip center so that you can still utilize the spring later on in stomp phase as your leg is, as you're planting your foot and pushing through and driving over it.

00:30:20: And so when the prosthesis is out behind you, it's still effective when you're loading it out behind you.

00:30:27: Going to double amputees, that's a really interesting question about mechanical advantages and technology and that sort of stuff.

00:30:36: And I think that's a really, really interesting discussion.

00:30:38: And I genuinely think, it may be contentious, but I genuinely think bilateral amputees have a biomechanical advantage that can translate into a physiological advantage over certain distances because of the mechanical efficiency.

00:30:56: You were very successful as a guy who didn't like to sprint, but some medals and so on.

00:31:05: And then you decided to study medicine and to work well in orthopedics and trauma.

00:31:12: Tell me more about that.

00:31:16: Well, this goes back to me always loving science and loving trying to understand how stuff works.

00:31:23: And as I was kind of doing my athletics and I was coming up to Beijing and I knew that I had to make some decisions about what would happen after Beijing.

00:31:33: Did I want to be a Paralympic athlete for another Paralympic cycle or for as long as I possibly could?

00:31:41: Did I want to go and try and pursue a career in sports and exercise science like we spoke about earlier?

00:31:48: And the answer to both of those questions will probably not.

00:31:53: I probably want to get on with the rest of my life.

00:31:56: I never actually intended to be a Paralympic athlete.

00:31:58: It was a fantastic opportunity that came my way.

00:32:00: But I guess I had to be relatively pragmatic and practical and think, okay, what am I going to do long term?

00:32:06: And so I thought, what would I like to have done had I not wanted to join the army when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old?

00:32:13: And I thought about medicine.

00:32:15: You know, I love trying to understand how things work.

00:32:18: I like fixing stuff and I love the human body.

00:32:20: and what better way to bring those together than studying medicine and actually making that your job.

00:32:27: Your job to understand how the body works and understand how to fix it when it goes wrong.

00:32:32: And so I applied to medical school, I actually sent off my application when I was at the holding camp in Macau just before we flew up to Beijing for the Paranopic Games in two thousand eight.

00:32:43: And I sent my application off and I got an interview at a couple of medical schools.

00:32:47: and ended up starting medicine in Cardiff in September, two thousand and nine.

00:32:54: And I knew pretty much as soon as I started studying medicine at medical school, I do not even know that stage.

00:32:58: I didn't really have an idea of what kind of doctor I wanted to be when I graduated from medicine.

00:33:05: But actually the first few weeks at medical school, I realized that orthopedics was for me.

00:33:11: I loved the anatomy.

00:33:14: I actually liked.

00:33:16: I liked dissection.

00:33:17: I liked dissecting a human body in the dissection lab.

00:33:20: I found it really interesting.

00:33:23: It didn't put me off at all.

00:33:24: Some people, it really, really puts them off and they're like, no chance.

00:33:27: I don't want to do any sort of surgical specialty.

00:33:29: But for me, I found it really interesting.

00:33:33: And with my background in sports and exercise science and actually my background in gait analysis and biomechanics and that sort of stuff, it really lent itself really well to orthopedics.

00:33:45: So as I went through medical school, I sort of tailored my CV, tailored my resume to orthopedics, and I looked for orthopedic opportunities so that when I graduated from medical school, I had a pretty smooth path on my way to training and becoming a trauma and orthopedic surgeon.

00:34:05: And this, I think so, is naturally sort of so important for your patients.

00:34:15: I mean, did you ever do an amputation on another young man or young woman?

00:34:23: Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it?

00:34:24: I think my experience, my experiences generally have been fantastic in the world of medicine, being able to bring that empathy with me, having been a patient, but also having been an amputee, you know, and I have met many people who have had lower limb traumas.

00:34:42: that have required amputation.

00:34:43: I've also been asked to speak to people and counsel people who, for whatever reason, might be thinking about undergoing an amputation.

00:34:55: And yes, I have done a few amputations myself on people, not actually young fit people.

00:35:03: They have been you know, slightly less well.

00:35:06: In some cases, in one particular case, very, very, very sick.

00:35:09: I remember when I was a young resident.

00:35:13: In my early days as a resident, we had a guy who was incredibly sick with this condition called necrotizing fasciitis, where this is a very, very rapidly progressing infection that attacks the layer between the skin and fat and the muscle at the layer of what we call the fascia.

00:35:31: And it makes patients incredibly sick.

00:35:32: And the only way you can treat it is with very, very radical and rapid dissection and removal of that infected tissue.

00:35:41: And in this particular case, this guy was so sick that we couldn't even take him to theater, to the operating theater.

00:35:47: We had to operate on the intensive care unit.

00:35:50: And myself and another colleague had to amputate his leg on the ward on the intensive care unit.

00:35:57: And it's very, very surreal when you're on the other side of it.

00:36:01: But I think my experiences of being an amputee and what I've been through have been incredibly valuable in allowing me to relate to patients who are undergoing similar experiences.

00:36:17: So I really can believe that after an amputation, if you as a medical doctor come in and this is one can relate, you understand the state the patient is in.

00:36:35: I mean, you told us about your own experience.

00:36:39: So what do you tell these people?

00:36:41: I mean, perhaps even on our podcast, we have also amputees.

00:36:47: What is the sort of bottom line message you give these people?

00:36:52: I think at a very subtle level, Ranga, to start with, you don't tell them anything.

00:36:58: And I would find myself very much listening to them and making them aware that if it's appropriate, making them aware of my situation.

00:37:10: Sometimes I would have a conversation with people who've undergone massive trauma and life-changing injuries and not tell them that I'm in a similar situation and not tell them my story, but just be there for them and talk to them as their doctor and signpost them and that sort of stuff.

00:37:30: But yeah, there have been people where I've had conversations with where they've known about my amputation and my background.

00:37:37: But I listen to them and try to understand what it is that they want.

00:37:45: What's the journey that they're going on to?

00:37:47: Because not everyone who ends up with a disability wants to be a Paralympic athlete.

00:37:52: Not everyone wants to be a surgeon.

00:37:53: Not everyone wants to be an astronaut.

00:37:57: Everybody's goals and aspirations are different.

00:37:59: And I say to them that find something you enjoy.

00:38:06: find stuff you are passionate about.

00:38:08: Because if you're passionate about it, it comes from in here, you are intrinsically motivated to do it.

00:38:16: It's not difficult to do something that you are passionate about.

00:38:19: And that will be your vehicle for rehabilitation, whatever it is.

00:38:24: If that's a physical thing, if it's a sport thing, then great.

00:38:27: That will involve your physical disability.

00:38:29: And yes, you will learn to be a certain person, you will grow as someone with a physical disability through trying to do exercise and sport as someone with a disability.

00:38:43: But if it's music, art, literature, science, whatever, that's equally important.

00:38:50: It's about finding something that you find interesting, that you're passionate about, that gives you value, reward and comfort.

00:38:59: Well, I could only agree and this is, I think, so true for everybody.

00:39:04: I mean, I tell my children, do what is in your heart, listen to your heart.

00:39:10: Let's go back to your everyday life.

00:39:14: I have a quote and the quote says, it's your quote, the functionality of an advanced waterproof microprocessor knee has allowed me to live a normal life.

00:39:24: I can run for a frisbee, go rock-polling with my children and help them to learn swim in the sea.

00:39:30: I can walk up and down stairs and so on.

00:39:33: So in other words,

00:39:36: well,

00:39:37: We spoke about carbon fibers, but now, if you look at modern prosthesis, it's high-tech, isn't it?

00:39:46: Microprocessors.

00:39:48: Tell us more about, well, how is that?

00:39:52: Are they intelligent?

00:39:55: Absolutely.

00:39:56: That list of things you mentioned that I could do, I could probably do them badly on a purely mechanical knee.

00:40:07: you know, this waterproof feature and that sort of mechanical needs are generally easier to waterproof than needs with computers in them and that sort of stuff.

00:40:17: But here's the difference.

00:40:19: What the technology nowadays provides is quality, accuracy, reassurance, stability, comfort, a biomechanically normalized gate.

00:40:37: and you know as well as having an interest in this stuff Through the process of the the world.

00:40:45: I'm in at the moment in the in the space world and looking at Getting my my prosthesis certified to potentially fly to space.

00:40:53: I've had to learn or been able to learn a huge amount about the the workings and what underpins the the functionality of the new unit and it's it's phenomenal, the gyroscope, the accelerometer, all the sensors and how they all come together with the microprocessor to deliver the functionality that allows an amputee to really not have to think too much about what they want to do day to day.

00:41:29: get back to the aspect of, well, the complexity of modern prosthesis.

00:41:35: Now, if I look at modern medicine, I mean, just think of it.

00:41:40: We have people who use papes makers or small insulin pumps or artificial hips, knees.

00:41:49: So all this is regarded today as normal.

00:41:52: And I ask myself, if we look into the future, Could it be that we could one day exchange even parts of our bodies?

00:42:07: So I discussed this with Hugh Kerr, you know?

00:42:10: To put it clear, can you imagine that one day, for example, I, as an old grandfather, would ask to be amputated in order to walk again?

00:42:21: This is really a weird question.

00:42:24: Yeah, that's very interesting, I guess.

00:42:27: Certainly, if we're talking about an age thing, the failure is physiological, isn't it?

00:42:34: So if you swap the aging physiological hardware for new high-tech bionics that doesn't have DNA in it that's going to degrade over time as the cells reproduce and divide and whatever.

00:42:54: Yeah, very, very interesting.

00:42:58: Why not, right?

00:42:59: And I guess one thing, I was... The brain, I think where we're heading is harnessing that connection between the brain and the body that exists anatomically.

00:43:12: And actually, in the context of prostheses, really harnessing that to make prostheses more functional, giving you... the same sort of functionality that you would have in your anatomical limb.

00:43:31: Can we look at things like cortical mapping?

00:43:34: Can you put like a cortical overlay over the sensory and motor cortex of a part of the body and then use that to transuse signals to relay those signals to a bionic limb?

00:43:50: It might seem sci-fi, but I think it's possible.

00:43:54: it may be the reality sooner than we think.

00:43:59: But something like that would be phenomenal.

00:44:02: Yeah.

00:44:02: And I think so.

00:44:03: This is the lovelier time we are living in where technology empowers us to do things.

00:44:09: I mean, just like high-tech prosthesis empowered you to do different things.

00:44:17: And one aspect is And now we come to your latest geek, which is become an astronaut.

00:44:26: In November, ESA selected you as its astronaut reserved and launched a program named Fly.

00:44:36: This is, I believe, a feasibility study to enable space missions with certain physical disabilities.

00:44:44: And you are the first person to be a member of the ISAS astronaut reserve.

00:44:50: So, well, tell us more about Fly.

00:44:56: So Fly was really an initiative that was conceived probably in the early twenty twenties.

00:45:03: And at the time, it was the director of human and robotic space exploration at the European Space Agency, a guy called Dave Parker, who posed the question, Would it be possible for someone with a physical disability to be an astronaut?

00:45:18: And it was just very simply that.

00:45:21: And that gained a lot of interest and they wanted to answer that question.

00:45:27: And so they went through a couple of phases to really understand, you know, could they undertake this and could they end up.

00:45:36: employing me to do this.

00:45:38: that I have done.

00:45:40: And so they spoke with NASA and they took counsel from the International Paralympic Committee about what kinds of disabilities might be suitable to consider.

00:45:52: They had some discussions with NASA with a range of disabilities and said we have lower limb amputation, leg length discrepancy, short stature.

00:46:01: Do you think any of these

00:46:03: would

00:46:04: be a problem in becoming a professional astronaut?

00:46:09: NASA were like, you know, there would be some workarounds.

00:46:13: You know, there might be some problems here and there, but actually, all of the problems seem workable.

00:46:19: So, yeah, I don't see why someone with a disability in those group of disabilities couldn't, which was then when ESA put out the... the application and they were recruiting for a new class of astronauts in twenty twenty one twenty twenty two and uniquely within that they were looking for someone with a physical disability.

00:46:40: Who when selected would do this feasibility study.

00:46:43: so the fly initiative is sort of born about five years ago or so and the feasibility phase was a stage of the fly initiative and in that in that phase we basically looked at.

00:46:57: What are the requirements of an astronaut today?

00:47:01: So what are the existing requirements?

00:47:02: So we're not changing the requirements.

00:47:04: What are the existing requirements?

00:47:06: And how would me with my disability and my prosthesis be able to meet those existing requirements?

00:47:13: But

00:47:13: it was you who applied?

00:47:15: Or I mean, how did that go?

00:47:17: You said, hey, I'm the guy.

00:47:19: Yeah, I applied alongside many other people who applied.

00:47:22: And I went through a parallel selection process.

00:47:25: So at the same time, a whole bunch of people with disabilities applied for the vacancy notice that was astronaut with a physical disability.

00:47:35: And then alongside that, in parallel, were a whole bunch of people who applied to be an astronaut.

00:47:41: And it was a concurrent and parallel application process that I went through the same selection processes.

00:47:47: as my able-bodied counterparts through the same stages.

00:47:51: And we were, yeah, we were whittled down to a few and I ended up being selected as the final, the one and only final candidate.

00:48:01: Did they phone you?

00:48:02: You were at home and suddenly you hang up the phone and tell your wife, hey listen now, I'm an astronaut.

00:48:12: I guess the final stage, if you like, was I was waiting for... I'd been to the final interview with the director general, Joseph Aschbacher, the director general of ESA.

00:48:23: And following that, it was basically a question of sitting tight and going, OK, waiting for some news, yes or no.

00:48:32: And I got the phone call on a Friday evening from Joseph Aschbacher saying, John, I would like to invite you to Paris.

00:48:40: where you will be announced to the world as part of the new class of astronauts of the new class of east astronauts in twenty twenty two.

00:48:49: And that was that was how how I found out.

00:48:54: Now what happens then?

00:48:55: I mean every little boy.

00:48:58: I myself dreamt of becoming an astronaut.

00:49:01: and here with all your story.

00:49:03: Suddenly, hey, come to Paris, we'll announce you are an astronaut.

00:49:07: Well, I mean, from a psychological point of view, this is a firework.

00:49:13: Well, I knew at that stage, actually, it was just the start because before this, I knew there was no guarantee of me ever going to space.

00:49:26: What the post was for, it was for recruiting someone to do a study to see if it would be feasible.

00:49:32: technically feasible for someone with a physical disability to be a professional astronaut, there was no promise of a flight, no promised opportunity to fly.

00:49:40: So I always knew in the back of my mind, I might not get the opportunity to fly.

00:49:47: And so I was pretty open-minded.

00:49:49: I guess maybe not so much pressure.

00:49:52: I didn't have that pressure that I had to succeed in order to... Well, I guess I knew we had to succeed in order to fly, but at that stage, there wasn't a flight at stake.

00:50:02: But I knew when I was selected that that was when the work would start.

00:50:06: This is when I had an opportunity to demonstrate to people what individuals like me with physical disabilities are capable of doing.

00:50:16: And now let's take our audience into a world which you know, and fortunately enough, I know which is the world of weightlessness.

00:50:26: You participated in parabolic flights, just a short explanation.

00:50:32: And actually, we don't have a lab where you turn a switch around and you have the state of weightlessness, unfortunately.

00:50:39: So you can simulate weightlessness with an airplane if you fly a parabolic curve so that when you're inside, you don't feel the weight.

00:50:50: And these are these fantastic thirty seconds where suddenly everything is floating.

00:50:59: And you were on such a campaign.

00:51:00: So first of all, well, how did that go?

00:51:05: Yeah, Raga, I've been super lucky that I've had the opportunity to fly quite a few times.

00:51:09: I think I'm close to maybe three hundred parabolas now over the number of flights that I've done.

00:51:17: And I was actually on one this week, so on Wednesday I flew, this week is just two days ago, and we were looking at feet, we were looking at prosthetic feet and how we could optimize the ergonomics of the prosthetic foot to interface with the hardware on the space stations to allow me to translate through the station and then stabilize myself so I can free up my hands to do activities.

00:51:49: And it was great.

00:51:50: I mean, I don't think you ever get tired of that feeling of experiencing weightlessness.

00:51:54: I mean, you say you've been there as well.

00:51:57: Oh,

00:51:57: yes.

00:51:58: You've had

00:51:58: that opportunity.

00:51:59: I have had

00:52:00: over a hundred parabolic flights.

00:52:03: But I want to be honest, you know, at the beginning I was so excited.

00:52:07: And I felt seasick, and it was documented, so I'm very honest.

00:52:14: But then you get used to it in a certain way.

00:52:17: But to me, first of all, one has to explain to the audience, you have two phases.

00:52:23: The one is the parabolic curve where you fly, you're weightless.

00:52:28: And then you have to pay the price because the aircraft, basically, you have to pull up again.

00:52:33: So you have two G or double your weight.

00:52:37: And this is also very strenuous.

00:52:38: Now, in weightlessness itself, I could imagine, well, the difference between an amputee and a non-amputee is zero because you are floating, or am I wrong?

00:52:52: Yeah, I think from a load bearing point of view, during day-to-day activities of moving around inside the International Space Station, you're not load bearing.

00:53:01: So from that point of view, yeah, very little difference.

00:53:04: But actually, humans are... tremendously good at adapting to their environment.

00:53:09: And if you notice that if you watch videos of astronauts moving around the space station doing tasks and activities, they very often slip their feet under these blue handrails or under a strap here and there.

00:53:23: And so they're using their feet like hands to stabilize themselves.

00:53:26: And so that's something that I would also do.

00:53:29: And I would use my prosthesis and I would use my other leg, my left leg

00:53:34: as well.

00:53:35: as tools to stabilize myself.

00:53:37: And so this is something that I would have to learn and adapt to how best to interface or how best my prosthesis can interact with that new environment.

00:53:49: And the other thing on the other side of that is actually I would use my prosthesis to do exercise on the space station.

00:53:54: So to run on the treadmill, to cycle on the bike and use the weight training device.

00:53:59: And so I would be loading through my prosthesis to do that so that I can continue to keep you know, my body healthy and especially the bones on my right side of my remaining leg healthy.

00:54:11: Yeah, well, I think so.

00:54:12: that's a very important aspect because if you think of long space flights Bone loss in space is a big problem.

00:54:21: I mean they did some analysis and the For example proximal femoral bone loses one point five percent of its mass per month.

00:54:30: So roughly ten percent over six months and recovery is relatively slow.

00:54:36: So Well, the physical exercise is something which is very important.

00:54:41: So you also work on that, how to keep the body where it should be in shape for long space missions.

00:54:52: Yeah, absolutely.

00:54:53: And again, going back to parabolic flights, this is something we wanted to understand better.

00:55:00: I wanted to optimize the setup of my running prosthesis.

00:55:05: for potential use on the treadmill on the International Space Station.

00:55:09: And so to do this, we did some biomechanical analysis of me running on a treadmill on a parabolic flight, so running in microgravity.

00:55:18: And that was really, really interesting.

00:55:21: And you go back to these loads, these two G phases in the parabolic flight.

00:55:27: So I'm stood on a treadmill wearing a harness, because in microgravity, you need some sort of stimulus.

00:55:35: to simulate gravity.

00:55:42: You wear a harness that pulls you down onto the treadmill with these elastic bungees.

00:55:48: I was running at about eighty-five percent of my body weight, but you got to remember in the two G phase, you've got the two G and you've got the eight Eighty five percent on top of that of your body weight in addition to the two G's of my body weight.

00:56:03: and so that was that was really interesting.

00:56:07: But yes, so maintaining your bone density is something that's really really important and whilst running also does that.

00:56:13: I saw the video where you're standing there and John I have so much respect because this especially Two G phase is very difficult and people faint because you know just standing there the blood is sucked down.

00:56:30: So this shows again well you're the right stuff because you know physical fitness and so on is there now.

00:56:39: If you look at this is very special as an application using prostheses.

00:56:45: in space and it could be that one day this happens.

00:56:50: so if you take that I sometimes ask myself you know the.

00:56:55: the question which you posed at the beginning was well do we need possible that amputees or people with some sort of, well, disorder would participate in a mission.

00:57:12: But if I look at your life, the fact that you have this resilience, the fact that, and you know it from piloting, situational awareness, the fact that you have to prioritize, that you have to take decisions.

00:57:29: There is so much, which is much more important than, well, an artificial limb, that sometimes I ask myself, isn't it just personalities like you, which are much better on a long mission than, let me quote, normal astronauts?

00:57:50: Well, I think certainly my life's journey has, how would I say it?

00:57:59: encouraged me to you or encouraged certain aspects of my personality to come to the fore.

00:58:08: I think that we are all just humans, right?

00:58:12: We are all just humans.

00:58:14: Everybody is different.

00:58:15: Everybody has their own stories.

00:58:18: Everybody has their own determination, resilience.

00:58:23: I think I am very lucky that I have lived a life where I have been required to use these skills.

00:58:36: But I also like to think that they would be there if I was a normal astronaut as well, if I wasn't an amputee.

00:58:47: I sometimes ask myself whether this whole accident is nineteen.

00:58:52: I mean, if I look at your life, would you have participated in Olympic Games?

00:58:58: Would you have studied medicine?

00:59:00: Would you have gone?

00:59:00: You know, sometimes it might sound a bit weird, but wasn't this in a way a present to a life which is so exciting?

00:59:11: I mean, many people would say, oh, wow, what does he do all?

00:59:15: What can he live?

00:59:19: Yeah, I think it's really, really difficult to unpick, isn't it?

00:59:22: And I do often think, and sometimes it comes up in conversations like this, what would my life have been like had I not been an amputee?

00:59:32: And I think what it boils down to, Ranga, is opportunity.

00:59:37: And I've always been someone who has just seized opportunities that have come my way.

00:59:42: And those opportunities as an amputee, may have looked different to the kinds of opportunities that would have come my way had I not lost my leg.

00:59:53: However, saying that the things that make me tick, the things that inspire me, the things that make me want to get up out of bed every day in the morning are the same things whether I'm an amputee or not.

01:00:06: And I am pretty sure that I would have looked for those same values in my life, whether I was an amputee or not.

01:00:17: And who knows where it would have taken me.

01:00:20: I guess back then, whether I was an amputee or not back then, you know, twenty-five years ago, I didn't really know where I wanted to be.

01:00:29: I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

01:00:31: I knew what in here, the sorts of things that made me tick and what I derived pleasure and enjoyment and fulfillment from.

01:00:40: But I did not know how to implement that into my life.

01:00:45: I had no idea what format that was going to take.

01:00:47: I thought it was the army, which is why I wanted to join the army.

01:00:50: I thought that's what it was going to be when I was young, that spending time in that operational environment, challenging yourself both physically and emotionally and psychologically, you know, putting yourself in difficult situations in hostile environments, that appealed to me.

01:01:07: I didn't know why.

01:01:08: And I think That's something that's deep down in here.

01:01:12: And I like to think that I would be the same person whether I had a disability or not.

01:01:18: I think what's happened to me is I've just gone out and proved that I can still do it even though I've got a disability.

01:01:25: Now, just imagine I want to play a game with you.

01:01:29: In fact, I have to tell you a story.

01:01:30: Twenty years back, I was filming at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

01:01:36: and a good friend of mine, who is an astronaut, Ulrich Walter, he came up and he said, oh, Ranga, listen, we just discussed about you and NASA and ISAO.

01:01:48: They need a science journalist because we need to have one up.

01:01:55: And we have a ticket.

01:01:57: You are on the next mission.

01:01:59: Are you in?

01:02:00: So I want to play that game.

01:02:02: Naturally, you fooled me, unfortunately.

01:02:05: But I give you the same question.

01:02:08: John, here is a ticket and you are in for the next ISS mission.

01:02:13: Do you take it spontaneously?

01:02:17: Does a bear shit in the woods ranger?

01:02:22: As we say very colloquially in English.

01:02:24: Yeah, absolutely.

01:02:26: I would bite your arm off for it.

01:02:28: OK, no, leave my arm.

01:02:30: But you are married.

01:02:32: I mean, you have a wife.

01:02:34: I think you have two children.

01:02:36: Three children, yes.

01:02:37: Three kids.

01:02:37: Three

01:02:37: children by now.

01:02:39: What does your family say?

01:02:42: I mean, father is going nuts because now he's constantly doing things which are extraordinary for all of us.

01:02:54: they would be one hundred percent behind me.

01:02:57: And what's beautiful is my kids.

01:03:01: see what is out there in the world.

01:03:06: It's an opportunity for my wife and I to broaden their horizons.

01:03:14: I kind of feel sorry for my kids a little bit, Ranga, because you have me with my story, and then you have my wife, who is also an Olympic gymnast.

01:03:23: And the three kids have these parents who... Who

01:03:28: big heroes, yeah.

01:03:31: Who have achieved something.

01:03:32: that, too, a lot of the population is very, very tangible, right?

01:03:39: It resonates with people what being an Olympic or Paralympic athlete means and stuff.

01:03:44: And I hope that my children can see the richness... in life, what is out there, what is possible, what they can do if they want to and go and explore.

01:04:01: And in this particular journey that we're on, they're hugely behind me and really excited.

01:04:06: They probably get bored actually.

01:04:09: It's the day-to-day talk, yeah, dad's doing this, our dad's doing that.

01:04:12: It's because they live it every day that probably they're quite nonchalant about it now, but still very supportive.

01:04:20: Well, John, I know I could go on, but I look at our time, but I want to give you a quote, which I found you wrote it down.

01:04:28: And this is back, you know, when you're young in the hospital, I think so.

01:04:36: And I just quote, the gist of my ramblings, you were writing into a photo album at the back page, brought into sharp focus the fact that I was alive and loved.

01:04:49: and that behind the doors for which I was now reaching lay-only opportunity.

01:04:55: This is a sentence where I just thought, yes, this is so true, not only for people like you, but for your children, for everybody else.

01:05:07: Is it this sort of perspective of an opportunity positive look into the future, which is crucial?

01:05:19: I think so.

01:05:20: I think probably It is one of the strongest cornerstones, if not the biggest cornerstone in my life.

01:05:33: that maybe it's eternal optimism, I don't know.

01:05:38: But there is opportunity out there for all of us.

01:05:42: You just have to find it.

01:05:44: You just have to find it.

01:05:44: And it's incredibly empowering, seizing opportunity.

01:05:49: When you see it and go, ah, is that possible?

01:05:52: I like the sound of that.

01:05:53: And then you work on it and you explore it further and then you take it further and you then you realize that opportunity and it's incredibly rewarding and empowering.

01:06:04: And I think that's what excites me.

01:06:08: and that coupled with probably my resilience and strength of character.

01:06:14: I think probably those two things are my strongest values.

01:06:22: as I go forward in life.

01:06:26: Yes, and the fact that we live nowadays where we also have high tech, we have companies like Ottobock, we have microprocessors in our artificial legs, which is naturally fantastic.

01:06:42: So all in all, I think so, John, thank you for your incredible insight and inspiration.

01:06:49: Fingers pressed for the next missions.

01:06:52: It's a pleasure, Ranga.

01:06:53: Thank you so much for having me.

01:06:56: Many thanks to Ottobock for making Taste of Bionics possible.

01:07:00: And of course, great thanks to you, John, for sharing your inspiring journey with us.

01:07:06: And if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe and stay tuned for more stories from the world where humans and technology meet.

01:07:18: Thanks for listening and see you next time together.

01:07:21: another.

01:07:22: Taste of Bionics.