Fighting Forward

When Edmund “E.Q.” Sylvester retired from his career as an international businessman in January 2011, he had a plan to play golf all around the world. He hoped to travel to far-flung destinations, taking his photography skills along with him.

Life took that opportunity away but in return it has given him one of the greatest joys he will ever experience.

Four months after retiring, Sylvester came down with an infected kidney that sent him into a two-week coma. Doctors gave him a cocktail of antibiotics that brought him back, but he had suffered sepsis, an extreme response to infection that triggers a chain reaction. The good part was, he survived. The bad part was that he would leave the rehabilitation center nine months later as a triple amputee.

“In the months that followed, I was just trying to figure out what to do with my body,” Sylvester recalls. “I could swim but I couldn’t get out of the pool because I didn’t have any fingers. On the golf course, I couldn’t hit it out of my own shadow and thought, ‘Well this isn’t goin...