Al­most sev­en years ago Maris­sa Gar­cia was struck by a maxi taxi while cross­ing the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, in Arou­ca.

She suf­fered se­ri­ous in­juries to her right leg, ribs and spine.

Doc­tors even­tu­al­ly had to sev­er her limb in June 2017 af­ter sev­er­al ef­forts to save it failed.

Gar­cia, 36, is de­ter­mined not to al­low the dis­abil­i­ty to change her life and wants to start her own sup­port group for oth­ers like her­self in this coun­try.

The moth­er of two was knocked down by a maxi taxi on the Five Rivers junc­tion, Arou­ca back in 2012.

“Cross­ing the Bus Route on the red light, a maxi was wait­ing for me on the op­po­site side, I re­mem­ber the dri­ver say­ing yes fam­i­ly, I have one for you,” said Gar­cia.

Gar­cia said she couldn’t re­mem­ber what hap­pened next.

“Eye­wit­ness­es told me I flew ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 feet in the air and bounced like a ball be­fore I stopped,” Gar­cia told Guardian Me­dia.

She spent over two months in the hos­pi­tal and sus­tained in­juries to her right leg, ribs and spine.

“I had steel, bro­ken bones, pins, tie wire, you name it I had it on the in­side try­ing to save the leg,” said Gar­cia.

How­ev­er, her bat­tle with her right leg came to an end on June 5, 2017, when she and her fam­i­ly made the de­ci­sion to am­pu­tate.

“I was car­ry­ing around dead weight, the am­pu­ta­tion didn’t change my mo­bil­i­ty,” said Gar­cia.

How­ev­er, she said she strug­gles dai­ly as she tries to live a nor­mal life.

Gar­cia told Guardian Me­dia she reg­u­lar­ly ex­pe­ri­ences phan­tom pain but when she takes her pre­scribed med­ica­tion she feels de­pressed.

“Right now I’m ac­tu­al­ly feel­ing the bro­ken pin I had in my knee jam­ming me even though the leg is not there,” Gar­cia said dur­ing an in­ter­view.

Gar­cia said a sup­port group would be help­ful with deal­ing with these ef­fects.

She said a group can al­so help with oth­er dai­ly tri­als am­putees face such as pub­lic trans­porta­tion, health care and the stig­ma at­tached to be­ing dis­abled.

“Sim­ple ex­pe­ri­ences as go­ing to the beach, I wear a biki­ni and peo­ple would whis­per, she can’t be se­ri­ous, wear­ing that with one leg.”

Gar­cia re­grets such com­ments say­ing she’s still hu­man and be­lieves a sup­port sys­tem can help am­putees feel in­clud­ed.

As the world recog­nised April as limb loss aware­ness month, Gar­cia has one mes­sage for her fel­low am­putees: “We are strong and per­fect­ly flawed.”