Ford Sutter, age 16, Metaire, LA, February 8, 2004 Robin Bowman

Ford Sutter, age 16 Are my parents gonna hear this interview? I don’t care, they know I smoked weed… because the second time I did it I crawled in bed with them! I was really scared ‘cause I was blazed. The one place I was really comforted when I was a child was in the middle of my parents-- I’d just talk to them and they’d calm me down. So that’s what I did… It’s so funny. I was in bed with my parents and I was, like, tripping, and my sister calls up drunk. So they have one kid on drugs and another kid on another drug. My sister always does the drunk phone calls-- she’s the “drunk dialer” as we call her (laughs) – like, who would call their parents!? Probably being diagnosed with cancer was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. I had just graduated from eighth grade at St. George’s Episcopal… I had six rounds of chemo and then I had a limb salvage done, and then I had seventeen more afterward… I’m an above-the-knee amputee at this point. At the beginning it was more like, “Why is this happening to me?” and just questioning myself, God, the world… There was a grieving period and a mourning period, and then I was doing all right, really. I kept a positive attitude; I had plenty of friends coming by and seeing me and keeping my spirits high… I’m doing great; I’m having a lot of fun with it actually. It’s my Mister Nubby, I call it (laughs). If I’m really good at running I’ll go for a running career… I’m walking now but I will be running soon. There’s a prosthetic that allows you to run competitively… I’ve wondered like, if there’s a God, why is He doing this to me? And then my dad’s also taught me that God doesn’t do this to you, it just happens and He’s there to help you through it.