When Johannesburg-based Sean Clarke underwent an amputation, he chose to spend his recovery on the North Coast. He shared his incredible story with us.
Sean was seven years old when his life split into a ‘before’ and ‘after’.
“One second I was a little boy playing outside with my brothers… and the next I was fighting for my life,” he remembers.
In a moment of fearless child logic, he jumped off the roof. He hit the grass with a heavy thud, glass from the window behind him raining down, and then he saw it.
“There was a massive stream of blood pouring out of my leg. Not dripping, not trickling. Pouring. Like someone had opened a tap inside my leg. That image is burned into my memory. It’s the moment my life changed forever.”
His dad scooped him up, hands clamped around his thigh. His mom drove straight to the hospital. In the backseat, Sean fought to stay awake.
“I remember how cold I suddenly felt, like the warmth was draining out of me. My eyes kept wanting to close and I kept thinking, if I close them, I will never wake up again. I kept saying, ‘I’m too young to die. Please help me.’”
He survived but nothing would be simple again.
From ‘Gammie foot’ to finish lines
The accident meant years of surgery, specialists and adaptation. “My disability was held together by love, by specialists, by visits to orthotists, by parents who refused to let me fall through the cracks. I didn’t realise how rare that was until I got older.”
Instead of shrinking his world, the trauma lit something up inside him. “Surviving that moment planted a fire that’s shaped every step since. I’d stared death in the face before I even lost my baby teeth. Once you experience that, you don’t want to waste a second of your life.”
Sean pushed his damaged leg further than most able-bodied people ever dream of: Comrades, Ironman, a ride from Joburg to Cape Town and more. Somewhere along the way, that injured limb became a character in his story.
“My Gammie foot became a best friend,” he says. “It helped me accept who I was.”
While pushing his physical limits, Sean also built a career in global tech logistics. In the background, a different purpose was forming, one that would become the Gammie on the Go Foundation, focused on disability inclusion and mobility support for children.
The day he chose to let go
By 2025, the cost of all that effort had caught up. “My leg hurt every single day. My mobility kept getting worse. I’d done everything: orthotics, physio, injections, rest, strength work, new shoes. Nothing changed.”
After years of big races, his foot ‘fell apart’. The X-rays were bleak: arthritis, joint separation, bone spurs, things shifting where they shouldn’t.
“It wasn’t this big heroic moment where I woke up and said, ‘Cool, let’s chop my leg off,’” he says.
“It was months of sitting with myself, admitting things I didn’t want to admit. I wasn’t just losing a limb. I was losing something that had been with me through absolutely everything.”
Therapy helped him grieve and name the fear. His doctors were frank: keeping the leg would mean more pain, long-term damage to his hip and back and a smaller, more painful life.
“Eventually, it hit me: the leg I’d been trying so hard to protect was actually holding me back. I stopped seeing the amputation as the end of something familiar,” he says. “I started seeing it as a genuine chance to start again. To have less pain. To move better. To live better.”
From one boy to a country of kids
A few years ago, Sean found himself replaying his childhood but this time imagining it without support. “Suddenly it wasn’t about me anymore. It was about every kid in South Africa living the same challenges I had, but without the support and resources I took for granted.”
“The purpose of the foundation is to make sure no child in South Africa faces a disability alone. It’s about giving kids the mobility, dignity and comfort they deserve.”
What has he learnt along the way?
“You don’t have to be perfect to do something powerful with your life,” Sean says. “You can be scared and still choose to move forward. Your challenges don’t cancel your potential. You are capable of rebuilding your life into something extraordinary, even after everything has changed.”
Details: IG: @gammie_on_the_go_foundation
