Q: How did you lose your right leg?

A: It was cancer. I was a healthy boy at West Pembroke Primary School and I used to swim every day. I was about 11 years old when my right leg started to hurt. So I went to the hospital and they said it was probably just a muscle strain and sent me home.

Two-and-a-half weeks later, it was still hurting, so I went back and they did an X-ray. When the doctors spoke to my parents, I could tell that something was seriously wrong because they had an "oh my God" look in their eyes.

A few hours later, the doctors told me I had cancer and it was a very aggressive form and that I would have to lose my leg. It didn't sink in at all. About three or four days later I was in Shriners Children's Hospital in Montreal. I had a lot of tests, bone scans, X-rays and MRIs. When they did a biopsy, they realised I would definitely have to lose my leg.

The surgeons used the Vanness procedure. Most people who have their leg amputated have it removed close to the hip and that really limits mobility. With the Vanness, they use part of the ankle to create a new knee. That's a pretty radical surgery and there's very few people in the world who've had it.

The operation involved 13 hours of surgery. At the same time they put an implant in my chest for the chemotherapy that I would be having for a year and a half afterwards.

I lost my hair and my eyebrows in chemo and my teeth felt as if they were going to fall out too, but I've still got them! At the same time, I had to learn to walk again. It was a year and half from hell.

I fought through that and had a lot of love from my parents. They're very religious and although I wouldn't call myself religious, I do believe that there are things out there bigger than us that help us to push ahead, and that can help you find a bit of energy sometimes.

Q: All of that must have been a terrible shock, particularly at such a young age. How did you cope?

A: As a kid, I dealt with it well. The most difficult bit was dealing with the way other people thought I should be. I was dealing with it fine in Montreal, but when I came back to Bermuda, my friends at school looked at me funny, some people stopped speaking to me and I felt like an outsider.I got teased and picked on a lot, which put some anger into me. I've always believed that people are ultimately good, but when they see something strange to them, they don't like it. I needed to find a way to deal with the teasing and I knew I wasn't going to be running away from any fights any time soon. So I got it into my mind that if there was a fight, I would have to stand my ground and if I had to duke it out physically, I would.

So I learned the martial art of aikido first and I went on to wrestling, boxing, kick boxing and jujitsu.

I was away for nearly two years in Montreal and went to the Berkeley Institute when I came back. My teenage years sucked, those years were no fun at all.

Q: And then you went to college?

A: I got accepted into Massachusetts Communications College in Boston to study sound engineering. Eight days before I was to be accepted into college, I was injured in a motorcycle accident. It happened at the junction of Cobbs Hill and Ord Road when I was hit by a lady's car. She didn't stop at the stop sign. When she hit me, I went flying over the handlebars and when I hit the ground I shattered my wrist and I broke both my legs.

The first person on the scene was a nurse and she said, "You're going to be all right, baby, I'm got you". I remembered having seen the whole thing and heard those words in a dream. It was one of the weirdest feelings I've ever had. She did take care of me until the ambulance came.

I was in a lot of pain but I didn't pass out. An old man arrived and held his hat over my eyes to shade me from the sun. I asked people not to tell my mom. Of course, she had to find out, I just didn't want her to go through it all.

Dr. Chelvam treated me. He had worked in the Middle East where he put soldiers with terrible injuries back together. He was just about the only person in Bermuda who could put me back together. After the surgery I had as a kid, my right leg already had a plate and pins in it and also a reconstructed knee. I went through five hours of waiting in pain and then it took three surgeries to put me right. I suffered a compound fracture in the leg I'd already lost and I completely fractured my femur in my left leg. My wrist was hanging off, with only skin and tendons keeping it attached.

Q: Did your experience with the amputation help you get through the effects of the accident?

A: Yes, I was nowhere near as scared as when I had cancer. For other people it would be hell, but for me it was easy compared to the first time. It was only broken bones, I thought. Everything was going to come back and I would be able to do what I did before.

Yes, I had to delay it for a year. I worked hard and went to the gym with a brace on my left hand and lifted weights again. That helped me get back to my martial arts, which really helps to lift my spirit.

Once I got to school, I enrolled in the Somerville Boxing Club. Boxing led me to judo and jujitsu. In Boston, I studied sound engineering and got my degree. I did some work with artists in Boston, hip-hop, R & B and a little bit of House.

Music and martial arts go together for me. They both fill that empty space inside me.

Because I've had so much excitement in my life, life can sometimes seem a bit monotonous for me. It's not that I want more trauma and tragedy, but I want the opposite side of tragedy. That's the sort of excitement I'm looking for now.

You've got to really believe in yourself and not listen to what other people are telling you, if you want to achieve success. It's about realising what you're good at and what you're here to do and doing it.

Q: Do you still box?

A: Yes, I train four days a week at Forty Rego's boxing club. My training sessions usually last two to three hours. Sometimes I train twice a day.

But the Bermuda Amateur Boxing Association (BABA) won't allow me to fight. Yet I've sparred with professionals and helped them get ready for fights.

Q: How do you think you'd get on against the local guys?

A: I could win most of my fights, if not all of them. I've sparred with most of them. In those sessions, they know who's the man and who ain't.

The truth comes in the ring. You can't rely on your ace boy to help you out and you can't run away.

I attribute my boxing abilities to my high pain threshold and clean technique.

Q: I understand your expertise in sound engineering has enabled you to make music.

A: I'm really into music but there is no outlet for that on this island. I attribute that largely to the government and management of Bermuda. The generation that came before us seem to want to blame the youth for how they react.

But when you bring up a child, then you show the way ? the child is going to follow your example. It's action and reaction. And the kids are reacting to what the generation before has done. There is frustration.

There are no musical outlets. They'd rather bring in foreign acts to perform. In the boxing game, they'd rather have a lot of amateur guys looking like complete idiots than letting the guys who train hard perform.

Q: What were you doing before your recent arrival at Positive Results?

A: I was selling cars for Rayclan. I only returned to Bermuda in August 2004, after I'd been away for nine years. In college, I met a beautiful Japanese lady, whose name is Mariseki. We got married and had a beautiful son called Satori. That was in Boston. I stayed there for six years and didn't really want to come back to Bermuda because of the conservative walls that I knew I'd come up against.

She wanted to study pottery and fine arts in a school in Pomona, California. With help from her family and mine, we were able to do that and we stayed there two-and-a-half years. I took up Brazilian jujitsu, which is a form of submission wrestling. I was also boxing four days a week.

I also pursued my music career diligently. I teamed up with a couple of guys, David Kneisler and Mike Dimattia, to form Mercy Soundsystem. We fused together a lot of different sounds, like hip-hop, R & B, House and reggae and created our own sound, which is a clean, crisp professional sound. We performed and linked up with the likes of BT, who scored films like and . We also linked up with Bill Hamill who won a Grammy for a soundtrack he worked on with Seal. I'm actually trying to bring Bill to Bermuda to have him do a concert.

My wife and I couldn't get a visa extension in the US. But I still wanted to learn more about the music scene, so we went to London. But money started getting tight, so we decided to come back to Bermuda.

Q: What is the music scene like for you here?

A: There are not many outlets. I've noticed the older generation tend to run the venues here and they still believe tourists want to hear calypso. But tourists have changed since the 1970s. They want to hear local artists but it doesn't have to be calypso or steel drums.Yes, we're musicians and all our tracks are original. We write our own bass lines, our own drum programmes and keyboard arrangements.Yes. I was in the US a long time, so I developed a rap and reggae style. Yes. I wake up every day and have to put on a prosthetic leg, but every day is a chance to do something.I've got a great family. I love my son and my wife. Right now, life is good, but I just want to add an exclamation mark to what I've done.

One of the reasons I wanted to leave Bermuda in the first place was that a lot of Bermudians say they're going to do this and that but they don't follow through. One of the things I learned from boxing is that you have to commit to your punches. And that is the same in life, you have to commit to every move you make.

Q: How do you cope without the right leg?

A: Well, the first way I cope is by not thinking about it. I just get on with things. I take it off to shower ? a lot of people ask me that. Now I'm working on getting a swimming prosthetic leg. The leg I have now is quite an athletic leg, as it has a flex foot on it. It's made of carbon fibre, titanium and strong steel.

The majority of people with prosthetic legs are very timid on them, but I'm not. I break them a lot because I put too much pressure on them.

You can do anything you want. All the answers are inside. That's where the energy comes from.