New Brunswick amputee, 10, meets US army war veteran

TORONTO — Jacob LeBlanc, the active 10-year-old New Brunswicker Global News introduced you to last week finally got to meet his inspiration.

Jacob — born with a high level amputation called a Hemipelvectomy where he’s is missing his right leg and pelvis — met up with Jay Fain, a 28-year-old US army veteran who lost his leg in Iraq to an IED six years ago.

Jacob says he doesn’t like to wear his prosthetic leg, which he says is heavy and slows him down. But Fain urged him to keep wearing it.

“He encourages me to wear my leg so one day I can have a leg like his,” Jacob said shortly after meeting Fain for the first time.

The two met in Toronto after Jacob’s prosthetist, Kirsten Simonsen, made the connection. She was hoping meeting Fain and seeing the bionic leg he wears will encourage Jacob to wear his prosthetic, which helps control the curvature of Jacob’s spine and prepares his  body to one day wear a bionic leg as well.

“There’s too much to life than just sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself,” said Fain, referring to what happened to him.

Jacob’s mom, Cynthia, said it’s good for him to see what he can have if he works for it.

“Jacob’s kind of shy, but he saw some of the things that Jay was able to do like how he came down the stairs, for instance, and Jacob knows he can’t go down the stairs the same way. He was like, ‘whoa, I can’t believe that you can do that with that kind of leg, I want one!'” LeBlanc said.

“He needs to have someone that he can turn to and say, ‘I really don’t want to wear my leg’ and it’s not mom telling him he needs to. He has a guy that talks to him and says, ‘you know what, you need to.'”

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Fain says he got just as much out of meeting Jacob.

“I guess she wanted me to meet him to inspire him,” said Fain, “but seeing a young kid like that doing what he does is more inspiring to me.”