Josh Bogle is a quadruple amputee who has found his home in the waves of Hawai’i.
His journey did not start in the water, though. “I grew up snowboarding some of the biggest mountains in the backcountry,” says Josh Bogle in a documentary short on the Wake Up, Matt YouTube channel. However, over a period of three years, numerous snowboarding injuries led Josh to become addicted to pain medication. His teeth were affected, and a strep infection in his jawbone landed him in the cardiac ward of a hospital, where his heart stopped for 30 seconds. After that, his heart was successfully operated on and he managed to wean himself off of the medication.
To celebrate the surgery, Josh went to Lahaina with his mother, where he stepped on a fish hook and got a staph infection. He was rushed to the hospital and slipped into a coma for 17 days. Lack of blood flow during the coma affected his limbs and required amputation.
After spending time learning to adapt to his disability, Josh returned to snowboarding. He almost qualified for the paralympic team, but just missed the cut due to injuries. However, as part of his rehab therapy, he was being pushed into a wave at Launiupoko, and from then on, he was hooked. He bought a foam board and set his sights on surfing Ho‘okipa.
By the end of that summer, Josh was competing at Duke’s Fest and the ISA world championships, then made the Hawai’i surf team.
Now he credits the ocean and surfing with helping him heal. “There’s a clarity when I go surfing,” says Bogle. “The state that I was in before I paddled out, to what energy I’m bringing back to the world when I’m coming in. Surfing is that healing that just happens.”
