GILLETTE, Wyo. — Diego Garcia stood at the edge of the pool at the Recreation Center trying to shake off his doubts.
He’s a bit flustered, even nervous. The 9-year-old knows how to swim, but today was going to be different.
In his arm, he held something that his dad and school counselor had worked for nearly two years to get. He was going to use it for the first time. He cradled it in his right hand. It was an inanimate object, just bits of black, lightweight metal shaped like the bend in the arm he never had.
Diego tightened the string on his dry Nike swim trunks, then put a small, slick sleeve on “Baby,” the portion of his left arm that ends just after the joint of his elbow. He attached his new arm to it and hooked it to the fin designed for swimming. All the while, he tried not to fret that he’d catch the end of his new prosthetic arm on the pseudo rocks that surround the Lazy River.
That’s when his dad saw an unexpected problem.
Diego had put the fin on backward. Instead of swimming through the water, he would have splashed himself in the face.
Some of his nervousness evaporated as they fixed the problem. Calm now, he waved to his dad as he stepped into the water.
One arm and an arm with a fin moved through the water, propelling him about 5 feet across the pool. Grasping one of those walls he’d worried about moments before, he looked back at his dad.
A smile lit both of their faces.
