By Mallory Mattingly
At just 19 years old, Amy Purdy was given a 2% chance of survival after being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
Last week, Purdy shared how her life has changed and what she had to overcome to become a Paralympian and DANCING WITH THE STARS finalist.
“I was 19 years old when I lost both my legs below the knees to something called bacterial meningitis,” Purdy told Fox News Digital. “We have no idea how I got it. I was a massage therapist at the time. I was also a passionate snowboarder, and my goal was to travel the world and snowboard.”
She recalled the moment her life almost ended.
“And then, all of a sudden, I got sick one day,” she said. “Within 24 hours, I was in the hospital on life support, where I was given less than a 2% chance of living, and it ended up being bacterial meningitis.”
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“I ended up fighting for my life. I lost both my legs below the knees to septic shock. I ended up losing my kidney function, my spleen, the hearing in my left ear — barely survived,” she continued.
After she recovered from the illness, Purdy needed to rediscover who she was.
“I ended up, you know, having to figure out who I was again in the world and how I wanted to live my life and how to put one baby step in front of the other and eventually worked my way, not just back, but forward in a way that I never could have imagined,” Purdy explained. “I ended up going further than I ever could have imagined…but it took a lot of steps to get there.”
She decided to continue to pursue her love of snowboarding, eventually becoming a Paralympian. Purdy also competed on DANCING WITH THE STARS with dancer Derek Hough.
“When I went on DANCING WITH THE STARS, I first of all had no idea if I’d be able to do it with two prosthetic legs,” she revealed. “One of my biggest fears going on the show — and, actually, I originally said that I didn’t want to do the show — was that I couldn’t point my toes. And that’s so hard. I mean, as a dancer, you need to be able to point your toes.”
That’s when Purdy found “these swimming feet in a magazine.”
“I was able to point my toes with these feet,” Purdy revealed. “And it actually kind of healed something in me because I all of a sudden felt really feminine.”
“In practice, my feet would slip all over the dance floor, yet somehow every week we were able to do this!” she posted last November alongside a video of her and Hough dancing.
She now uses her challenges to teach others how to overcome. In fact, her book, Bounce Forward: 21 Tools to Live a Life Beyond Limits, releases on April 14, 2026.
“Warm, practical, and profoundly healing, Bounce Forward is a guidebook for rebuilding after your most difficult moments that offers everyday practices for moving through adversity, reconnecting with your inner strength, and rising into a more fulfilling life,” part of its synopsis reads.
Purdy’s life is an incredible reminder that incredibly difficult circumstances don’t have to set us back.
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