Born in Chernobyl: Gold Medalist Oksana Masters' Story of Survival and Strength

so we were just saying before so you I mean just like a little backstory born in Ukraine and then became the most decorated par Olympian in the winter sports of all time ever that's basically the whole story that's it I'm like I said pretty boring but just like rewinding all the way to sort of like where it starts yeah the reason you were given up for adoption specifically was was what T my hair wouldn't curl they saw so that's really what it was that's the thing I was born with naturally curly hair what yeah I know very curly cuz I know they were just going to this is not but you can straighten yours so you're that's true but you can curl your hair no it will not I it's people have made it a mission like hair stylist and like well I I'll do it I'll do it and they do and then they curl it and they go to the other side and it's straight so they put a lot of hairspray in it and then I'm like a walking fire haser yeah that is an issue but girl you got to get like a DIYs and air wrap have you used those no I have the hair air the hair dryer from Dyson no this is the air wrap wait so is it natural curly then or is it my my hair's naturally Cur okay don't don't try me on that all right this is natural lusciousness but if you can get Dyson air wrap you just wrap it up boom and then this it'll be cly I'm going to get you hooked up with this watch we can fix this little problem okay the leg thing I can't fix but the hair thing that's easy that one's that one's an easy one that's fixable yeah exactly so but yeah it was my birth effects my hands were all webbed which I should have that should have been my sign I should have been a swimmer cuz I had six toes too so wait for real yeah which is not affected by radiation so six toes it's hereditary from like your parents your parents will have it and it's like a pass down Gene oh really so I'll have to ask one of my birth parents like which one which one did it are you still in touch with them no I've never met them I've never seen them you know you know nothing I know nothing about them I connected my birth Brothers have found out right communicating with them through social media but oh and you so you know your birth siblings yeah I mean through like literally just Google Translate and talking I've never met them in person oh wow so they weren't in the orphanage necessarily with you no they they were born healthy and how did you connect with them so when I was in 2015 I went back to Ukraine but not to keev I didn't go to where I was born and because it was the Ada anniversary which is the American Disability Act and um it was the an 25th year anniversary of that and then in 2014 15 Russia was invading Ukraine and so a lot of the military Ukrainian men and women were coming back injured they don't have the resources that we do in America for Prosthetics so the US Embassy of keeve invited me over there to kind of do that and then talk go through some orphanages and see them and show how powerful adoption can be cuz they're trying to pretend like it doesn't happen and kids are not being given up for adoption there yeah of course and so I don't I don't like to say defects I feel like that's uh that's kind of derogatory but like what were the what's a good word for it you tell me I just say birth effects I don't know it's not it's not a defect but it's like what were the just physical difference I don't know there differ let's go with that what were the differences you were born with that cuz now you've had certain surgeries and operations to change some of those things and sort of mitigate some of the problems what were the things you were born with um so I was born with my legs and what all caused it like the backstory to it was I was born Chernobyl happened 3 years before I was born and what a lot of people don't realize is the radiation levels there are still to this day higher than it was when it first leaked it just Rises and that land is so toxic still even in this current war that Russia is started in Ukraine and those guys were going back to Russia sick because of the because they were in the chal area the radiation is higher now than it was it's rising wow yeah it's going to take year like hundreds of years for it to go down so and where was your family in relation to the incident like where how far about like 48 km but they don't know like so and it kind of is all intertwined and it's so complicated I found out we found out it was radiation when my mom adopted me at 7 and a half and I went to my first dentist and I had radiation when they took the x-rays in my grown teeth and so they were like oh it's radiation induced because when you have birth effects are born with differences physical differences a lot of times it's localized so it just be like your legs are impaired or your arms or maybe one or the other but it would be the same type of an born without a leg tape same type of a birth difference right and I was born with my legs and they were I was missing the weight bearing bone on both of them my knee was kind of floating my left one had a little short it was like 7 in shorter and was arked in a CA so I SLE with it every night holding on I was really flexible wait what yeah and then I had six toes wait your leg would be you would hold on to your leg well it's so short it was like super short and it was arced in a c so like it was it was like but I bonded to like an airplane pillow if you basically if you just I don't know like picture like what is it the movie like scream from that creepy looking dude or whatever like or with the scary movie not scream Scary Movie um yeah I was that person's but so it was just a lot and they're really and then my hands and also and you said that they were webbed they were webbed and just didn't and then like so now I had double joints of all the and then also my hands like so I this joint this joint like one two but I don't have the third one that you do I just have two but they were double that third one were rated you don't even need that one you're not you're not missing out I promise when they say Size Matters and the length matters it does in that moment okay it really does and legs too that's but um so like they didn't even know at that time the internal things where I was my organs and the muscles cuz I was missing my I have one kidney I was missing parts of my stomach and this is what all things we learned when my mom took me to these doctors you didn't even know this for the first seven years of your life I didn't know it was different it was until I came to America I know I found out because that you're actually better than everyone yeah that I sounded really weird not looked weird I sounded really weird my accent that's crazy