The worst feeling?

It wasn't 13,000 volts shooting through his body.

It wasn't falling almost two stories.

It wasn't his body catching fire.

It wasn't burning 40 percent of himself.

It wasn't being in a coma for a nightmare month, trapped in his own burned skin and a hallucinatory haze, unable to speak but wanting to scream because doctors and nurses kept poking and cutting, but he had no idea they were doctors or nurses or why they were poking and cutting.

And it wasn't even losing both his arms.

No, the worst feeling was walking into the bathroom after he finally emerged from the hospital bed . . . and realizing that now he was going to need help with even this.

Hector Picard, so very proud, so very self-sufficient, could live without arms.

Dignity, that was another matter.

EMBRACING LIVING

Life gives you choices. You can curse God for taking two limbs. Or you can thank Him for leaving you legs.

Seventeen years later, Picard laughs and lifts a bottle of beer in his left prosthetic hand as he toasts to possibilities and inspiration and hope.

He plays basketball and racquetball and runs and swims and bikes now (you can see how on YouTube). He has completed four triathlons, which isn't something he had the will or spirit to do before the accident, and he has shaved minutes off his time each race. He ran the three miles and biked the 10 miles and swam the quarter mile in a little more than over an hour. Turns out you don't need arms to embrace living, and you don't need hands to hold on to the things that matter.

``I'm in the best shape of my life,'' he says.

How?

The answer isn't physical. Well, part of it is, but not the most important part. Picard's father was a mechanic in Cuba, so ``resourceful'' was a hand-me-down. He attaches a plumbing fixture to the bike for steering with what remains of his left arm, necessity forever the mother of invention, and wires the bike so he can brake with his knees. He shapes and sculpts a bucket to hold a basketball, and can dribble and shoot turnaround jumpers and play pickup games like just about anyone else, though he acknowledges through a smile that his ball-handling can be shaky.

EVERYTHING ISN'T ROSY

It's not all rainbows and roses, obviously, no matter how rainbow-rosy his attitude. He is always dropping things with his myoelectric hand, a stronger and more flexible alternative to a hook, and it can take him 20 minutes to put a nut on a bolt when it would take you 10 seconds. Something as simple as getting dressed can cause frustration and take too much time. You try putting on socks with your feet.

But some people look at life and see only horse manure. And some people look at horse manure and see only fertilizer. And some people, like Picard, accidentally step in life's horse manure and figure this fertilizer was left by a magical unicorn that would be fun to spend a lifetime chasing.

Finishing 505th out of 629 in his last triathlon?

``I'm just 20 minutes behind the leaders,'' he says.

No way to cushion a fall going downhill on a bike at 30 mph?

``I don't see fear; I just see the two guys ahead of me I'm going to pass,'' he says.

Suffering through a divorce now and being alone without a wife's help for the first time?

He shrugs and nods his chin toward where his arms should be.

``This is a great icebreaker to start new conversations with the ladies,'' he says.

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