LOS ANGELES: When Alex Young wanted to run again after undergoing a life-saving amputation of his right leg, he faced paying up to £25,000 for a specialist prosthesis.
So the former engineer set about creating his own, spending less than £100 on parts he found on Amazon and eBay.
Young, 46, is now learning to run again to raise money for the hospital that treated him.
“I was an engineer for 15 years and it’s just like putting pipes together,” he said. “It really is the same process. I thought, ‘I don’t want to have just a normal boring leg’ and I certainly didn’t want to spend the astronomical costs to buy one.
“The NHS are restricted on what funding they have so the options are either to go private, and it can cost up to £25,000 for a proper running leg, or do what I did and spend less than £100 to do it yourself.”
Young, from Blandford, Dorset, lost his leg after developing osteomyelitis, a painful bone infection. He opted to have his leg removed below the knee in August.
After spending six-and-a-half weeks in Dorset County Hospital, he has set his sights on learning to run again to raise money for the Purbeck ward.
His target is to run 5km to raise money for the hospital in Dorchester. Now he can manage to run 800 metres and plans to complete his run in July.
Young’s troubles with his right leg began 25 years ago when he sustained a broken ankle playing football. The break caused a callus bone growth in his foot, which pushed his ankle and foot inward.
He received reconstructive surgery in May 2024 at Dorset County Hospital. However, afterwards he contracted osteomyelitis.
He was given his first prosthetic leg on November 22.
While in hospital, Young was inspired to create his own specialist running prosthesis after learning about how much they cost. “The most important bit of the prosthesis is the foot, which I bought off eBay,” he said. “It was part of a whole leg, but the suspension part on the bottom was what I needed as it works like the calf. The carbon foot and the hydraulics suspension gives a nice spring back.
“Then I bought the connecting tubes on Amazon, which are made from aluminium. It all cost me less than £100 — and if I was to buy them all brand new, it would have cost me thousands.”
The only thing he did not buy second hand was the socket for his stump. “This is the only bit you can’t make,” he said. “It has to be fitted properly by a specialist and made by a professional so it can fit perfectly onto the stump.”
Young said that he was designing his own “thruster leg” for swimming, which he describes as “a mix between a water jet and a propeller”.
Despite many people thinking that it would be a difficult task, Young described the process as “super easy”. He said that he would like his story to help people learn more about amputees.
“I still get stared at all the time, and people don’t know what to ask,” he said. “I think it’s about educating people firstly and letting them know it’s not a bad thing to ask the question. We are exactly the same people we were before, we’re just missing a bit of skin and bone.”