When former Australian soldier Sonya Newman reflects on the life-altering medical crisis that led to her amputation, she offers a perspective that is as refreshing as it is characteristically blunt. Speaking with her today for The Limb Shift podcast (to launch in October), I was struck by an honesty and candour that lingers in my memory several hours after our conversation finished: “Limb loss can also open doors and show you a better side of life… I think it’s been actually beneficial for me, if I could say that strangely”, she told me.
As a combat fitness leader who spent two decades in the Army, Newman’s world was upended by a routine knee surgery that snowballed into a multi-year nightmare of chronic pain and infection. Yet today, she operates a bustling 250-acre farm outside Darwin, cares for dozens of animals, and represents Australia internationally in para ice hockey.
The Road to the Chainsaw Decision
Newman’s journey began with a standard procedure to address knee damage sustained during her defence service. “I went for an arthroscopy to, to fix my knee,” she explains. “I had a simple surgery… got a staph infection”.
What followed was a gruelling two-year medical saga consisting of three failed total knee replacements, two failed joint fusions, bending rods, and excruciating treatments where doctors placed silicone balloons into her empty joint cavity to inflate them over six months.
By age 36, the debilitating reality of non-stop opioid regimens and unstoppable bone infection brought her to a breaking point. The final decision to amputate was born out of a desperate need to reclaim her life. Newman recalls walking into her doctor’s office with an ultimatum:
“I said, look, get me to Sydney and make it happen. I’ve got a chainsaw if you don’t… I went into my doctor’s office and said those words. Exactly”.
When her doctor warned her about the extreme risk of further infection, she replied flatly: “What have I got to lose?” She was on a plane within days. “As soon as they were offering almost the, the miracle fix that, that quick end, it was actually pretty easy,” she says. “It was like, alright, let’s go make this happen. You know, I’m done waiting now”.
Mateship, Escalators, and Dark Humour
Following her initial surgery at Liverpool Hospital and a transfer to Holsworthy Barracks for rehabilitation, Newman threw herself into physical fitness. As an active soldier, sitting still was never an option. “The moment I got to Holsworthy Barracks, I was on a rower for like two or three hours a day,” she says.
Her ultimate lifeline arrived in the form of the Invictus Games. While she successfully tried out for a number of sports – including swimming, wheelchair basketball, and rowing – the true healing power of the Games wasn’t the trophies—it was the military camaraderie. “It was actually the mateship coming back into being around the same sort of people,” she reflects.
The community of fellow wounded veterans provided an environment of unapologetic, dark defence humour that allowed her to process her new reality. Newman fondly remembers training camps where “the boys would steal each other’s legs and take off down the street” to the horror of onlookers. It was also this group that pushed her to master navigating the world in a wheelchair, leading to a memorable mishap in a Canadian hotel lobby:
“The very first time I did it, this guy named Bear stood behind me… He’s like, ‘don’t worry, I’ll catch you if you fall, chook, you’ll be right.’ And sure enough, the bottom of the escalator… I fell. And I’m in the middle of the lobby of this hotel over in Canada, and everyone just stops and just picks me up and goes, ‘What? Hasn’t anyone ever seen an amputee fall out of a wheelchair before?’ … That’s what got me over the other side, basically”.
Post-Military Hardships and Moving Forward
Despite her drive, transitioning back to her full-time role in the Army proved to be an uphill battle against systemic mindsets regarding injured personnel. Newman details the immense daily pressure of attempting to meet rigid timelines when simply dressing in a modified uniform took fifteen minutes. The breaking point arrived when she was told, “if you can’t do it, we don’t need you”. “That just, it almost crushed me because I felt like I’d tried everything up to that point,” she admits.
After discharging in December 2018, Newman experienced a severe mental health crisis. “I thought I was going to be in a better place being away from work and everything, but I, I crashed,” she reveals. “In January the following year, I woke up from a coma in the hospital… because I’d got to a point that I didn’t want to be here anymore”.
With the swift intervention of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA), medical specialists in Sydney, and her partner Jen, she received the comprehensive psychological support and stump revision surgeries required to manage debilitating nerve pain. Newman notes that while mental health fluctuates, developing coping mechanisms has been her saving grace.
Crucial to her recovery was the shifting dynamic within her home life. Newman credits her wife, Jen, as being “rock solid by my side,” though she candidly notes the difficult transition out of a patient-caregiver relationship: “I said to Jen a couple of times like, ‘you’re not my nurse anymore. Like, can you just be, can you be my partner? Like, can you be my wife now, you know?’”
Life in the Tropics and the Ice Rink
Today, Newman lives an incredibly active, bush-centric lifestyle just outside of Darwin. Alongside her family, she manages commercial dog kennels and works a sprawling rural property populated by cattle, camels, and goats. “I’m probably working harder now than I did for the twenty years I was in the Army,” she laughs, detailing days filled with fencing, concreting, and fixing tractors.
Living and working in the extreme tropical humidity of the Top End presents unique challenges for an amputee. Newman has to remove her prosthetic six or seven times a day to wash away sweat and prevent severe rashes. “I have like—so we have, um, suction and a pin system and I’ve still had it fall off on the motorbikes,” she explains. “I’ve had to go back through the paddock and find my leg a couple of times”.
If managing a farm in the tropics wasn’t enough, Newman has also developed a self-described “new addiction”—para ice hockey. Recruited internationally through connections made during her Invictus days, she now proudly plays for the Australian national team. Strapped into a sled two inches off the ice, she relishes the high-speed, full-contact nature of the sport. “Bring back the biff. Well, hockey never, hockey never lost the biff. And that’s what I love about it,” she says enthusiastically.
Ultimately, Newman’s focus is on setting a powerful example for her fourteen-year-old son, Douglas, and twelve-year-old daughter, Ashley. Her guiding philosophy is beautifully straightforward, serving as an inspiration for anyone facing sudden adversity:
“I just want to show my kids that they can keep going and do whatever doesn’t matter what life throws at you. Have a crack, have a crack. That’s it… sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But I guess it’s, it’s taken me to some amazing places to be honest”.
Sonya’s interview will appear later in the year when the Limb Shift is launched during Amputee Awareness Week (October).
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