Don’t be afraid in the limelight — Dwayne Fernandes

“All parents. When they realize the kid has a disability, they reevaluate the world that they’re in.” Dwayne Fernandes dropped those words early in our chat, and they’ve been rattling around my head this evening, as I do some work tonight on my podcast project.

While my own journey into the “amputee club” was a frantic, “do or die” emergency born of sepsis and undiagnosed diabetes , Dwayne’s path was a deliberate evaluation of quality of life.

His mother was the first architect of his recovery. Realising that India in the 70s and 80s wasn’t built for a child with physical differences, she moved the entire family to New Zealand. “Mum goes on this journey to think about what life is like for a kid with a disability… she comes to the conclusion we’re not going to be staying there because we need a world that’s better for the kid,” Dwayne explained.

It was fascinating to hear about his “expert” status in hospitals—having five operations before he was even five years old. He described the Ilizarov method used on his legs—a brutal-sounding process of breaking bones to encourage growth—with the casual air of someone describing a routine dental filling. But by age eleven, the medical team offered a fork in the road: keep trying to save the legs or amputate.

Dwayne’s decisiveness at that age is staggering. While his mother debated, he took charge: “I’m like, no, just do them both. Let’s go”. For him, recovery started with that choice. He firmly believes that “if your mind actually chooses it and you choose it, you actually can live with it a lot better”. He even attributes his lack of phantom limb pain to this mental “letting go”.

“When the cast came off and I could see the scar, I’m like, oh yeah, I did this. And after that, no phantom foot feelings, no itchy toes… there is the let let go”.

His recovery wasn’t just physical; it was social. He spoke warmly of the inclusive culture at Mount Roskill Public School in Auckland, where a physical disability unit sat “right in the heart of the school”. It allowed him to be “an active social kid, this high energy, amputee” who dated normally and messed with people’s heads by rotating his prosthetic legs 180 degrees in woodwork class just to see if they’d faint.

When he moved to Australia at fifteen, the “medical system” became a new hurdle. He was so high-energy that he kept breaking his prosthetic feet, eventually leading the government provider to stop insuring them because he was “causing the government a lot more cost in feet than the average amputee”.

What I’ll take away most from Dwayne is his transition from a “toddler” amputee to a fierce advocate. He didn’t just go back to work; he demanded the workplace change for him and others. He wrote “sassy” emails to transport bosses, pointing out the lack of disability representation in leadership, which eventually led to the New South Wales government adopting formal disability employment targets.

His advice for those new to this life is blunt but empowering: “You’re adaptable. You’re resilient. You will find ways to make your life impressive. You are also then unique to everybody else… Don’t be afraid to be in the limelight”.

The Limb Shift podcast is currently in production and will launch later in 2026.