Middle school was life-changing for Hunter Woodhall. He was having fun indulging in sports and his doctor, Stephen Santora, and his prosthetist, Eric Green, frequently saw him in their offices; After all, every sport he played needed a different set of prosthetics, and they would experiment on what worked best for the kid. With football, Woodhall would try on stubbies (a type of short prosthetics), which also had to be soft so that he wouldn’t injure other players. But eventually, he found his love for running.

Each year, the Woodhalls would compete in a 5k fun run and Hunter, too decided to join in. He had a pair of prosthetics built at Shriner, especially for running, and instantly found it to be the perfect pair. “I loved it from the beginning,” he once revealed, and also stated how running gave him a sense of belonging. He then stopped searching for places to fit in and started running. He joined his middle school track team and replaced his football feet with his sprinting feet; Similar to the one that he wears today. Cut to the present, he is one of the most famous Paralympic athletes in the country. However, he has now hit yet another health crisis, along with his father.

On March 4, Hunter Woodhall shared an Instagram story with painful lines and a worried face. He wrote, “Came to Utah to spend time with my dad after his open heart surgery. Yesterday I had horrible stomach pain, turns out I have to get appendix removed. So we will be recovering together [heart emoji].” But this isn’t where things end. He put up two more stories to update his fans about his health.

The 26-year-old Paralympic athlete then shared a picture of himself bedridden in a healthcare facility with a finger pointing up towards the caption, which read, “Ready for lil emergency surgery. Didn’t need an appendix anyway.”

His last update came after the surgery was done. It was a short video where he was heard saying: “Just made it out of surgery, feeling pretty good. So everything went well, thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. Well, I’m straight. I didn’t need that appendix s—- anyways.” What’s ahead of him?

Well, as per ‘Cleveland Clinic’, it generally takes between one to three weeks to recover from the surgery. He may also have to consume more soft foods until his body can tolerate more solid foods. He will entirely focus on his recovery in the next few weeks. But all this also reminds us of his previous health issues and how his parents had to make a tough decision.

An 11-month-old Hunter had the biggest struggle. Because of the congenital disease, fibular hemimelia, he had only nine toes, and the right ankle fused to his leg. He had to undergo amputation below his knees to improve his quality of life.

The hard call Hunter Woodhall’s parents took

“From the day I was born, it was put in my parents’ hands to decide what was going to happen to me. They had the choice. I could have kept my legs and been in a wheelchair or something,” Hunter Woodhall revealed in 2024 about how his parents had to make a tough choice when he was just a baby.

They could have accepted the fate and let their kid sit in the wheelchair forever. Or they could have settled with the doctors’ initial words and never knocked at Shriners Children’s door. But they remained optimistic. The Woodhalls decided to try everything they could and rushed from one side of the country to another to take Hunter to the right treatment.

When his parents finally reached Shriner’s Children’s, the doctors there were the first to recommend amputation. The decision was tough, but his parents decided to go with the doctors’ instincts. Finally, when he was just one, both his legs were amputated, and just three months later, he received his first pair of prosthetics.

The result? A Paralympic athlete who won the gold in all his glory. “I always understood there was something different about me — I mean, I had to put on my legs every morning. But I have two older brothers, and I followed in their footsteps, doing things they did, including sports,” he revealed in 2024.

He has also traveled throughout the world with the help of his prosthetics. But for now, his aim remains recovering from the surgery and getting back to practice.