Alex1Leg

Alex Parra (age: 23), better known online as Alex1Leg is an American Youtuber residing in Roseville California. He is known for making education videos about his life as an amputee, after losing his leg due to osteosarcoma.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s09g60aFz2w Though he is primarily known for creating Youtube Shorts content, he also has several long-form videos on a variety of topics. Despite the serious and traumatic subject nature of his content, Alex has a notably exuberant and energetic personality, which has resonated with his audience and allowed him to gain millions of followers across several platforms.https://www.instagram.com/alex1leg/?hl=en 
Alex has talked about many aspects of his life after beating cancer, including stigma and discrimination faced by those with disabilities. In a short, Alex talks about how he is often confronted by strangers when using disabled parking spots, labeling it "the biggest problem about missing a leg."https://www.youtube.com/shorts/maVSr-6Y9cE 
==Battles with Cancer==
===First Battle===
In the summer of 2016, Alex began experiencing knee pain. Though he was able to ignore the pain for 2 months, he eventually noticed a lump had formed on his knee, causing his family to seek medical attention. Eventually, Alex was diagnosed with stage 2 osteosarcoma with a 40% chance of survival. After chemotherapy failed to treat the cancer, Alex had to face a decision between amputating his leg or receiving knee replacement surgery.https://blog.amputee-coalition.org/inmotion/issue/jan-feb-2024/heres-to-living/ According to Alex, his parents decided to introduce him to individuals who have received either treatment option and make the decision for himself. After flipping a coin that directed him to receive knee replacement, he realized that he wanted to amputate his leg instead. The amputation combined with follow-up chemotherapy allowed Alex to beat cancer for the first time, with his last chemo session on May 22, 2017.
===Second Battle===
Despite all of the cancer being removed, individuals cannot be medically considered "cancer-free" until they have been in complete remission for 5 years.https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/diagnosis-staging/prognosis#:~:text=Remission%20means%20that%20the%20signs,say%20that%20you%20are%20cured. Alex continued to receive routine cancer screenings during his initial remission when in October 2017, doctors had found four suspicious spots on Alex's lungs. Alex opted to undergo surgery to try and find the dots, 3 of which his surgeon managed to successfully locate. Surgeons were unable to find the fourth dot, which concerned Alex as there was no way to know whether the dot was cancerous or if it had metastasized elsewhere.
After a waiting period of several months, Alex received a phone call from his doctor 1 week before his high school graduation, telling him he needed to come in the next day. The doctors informed him that he had developed stage 4 lung cancer, giving him a prognosis of 3 months to live with a 10% chance of survival. Despite the incredibly unlikely odds, a successful clinical trial combined with immunotherapy treatment allowed Alex to beat cancer for a second time on January 11, 2019.
==History==
Though he joined YouTube in 2015, his first public long-form video was uploaded in January 2023. In the video, Alex talks about his experiences with various prosthetic legs, including his experiences and criticisms with each of them. This would set the tone for the rest of the content on his channel, as his videos are primarily educational and center around his status as an amputee and his life during and after his battles with cancer. As of recently, his shorts content has been primarily centered around his prosthetic leg, including his experimentation with fashion and showing off various prosthetics he owns.https://www.youtube.com/@Alex1Leg/shorts 
==Subscriber milestones==
* 1 million subscribers March 29, 2024https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCtoUmuogwpofcjshstQPnfQ
==References==
Category:Educational YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2015
Category:One million subscribers