By JoNel Aleccia

Six weeks after Schneily Similien received his artificial leg, the 4-year-old amputee and his family are finding that life in post-quake Haiti is one step forward, two steps back.

Schneily's father, Ducarmel Similien, remains grateful that his youngest son was fitted with a prosthetic limb to replace his crushed left leg and foot.

"He is doing good with his leg," Ducarmel said through a translator, adding that the boy can run, jump and even kick a ball while balancing on his fake leg, a milestone for child amputees.

But the 40-year-old carpenter was disappointed to learn that an anticipated job is no longer available at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, where the U.S.-based Hanger Orthopedic Group’s new clinic has treated more than 200 amputees since February. The position didn't work out after communication mix-ups and cutbacks at the hospital's woodworking center.

That leaves Ducarmel and his wife, Darline, 37, unemployed and struggling to provide for Schneily and his brothers, Scarcely, 13, and Schmeider, 10.

The family recently left a tent city in Leogane, eager to escaped the crowded, noisy, unsanitary encampment. They were able to return to their former home in the city outside Port-au-Prince, a house owned by Darline's mother. But the house was severely damaged in the quake and the second floor quarters, where Schneily was injured when the ceiling collapsed, remain uninhabitable.

Now Schneily's family is camped in a tent in the courtyard of their shattered former home, five people to one bed, with no income and little food, trying to come up with a plan for the future.

The whole Similien family is together again in L'Escale, the housing community for patients of Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, Haiti. Schneily, in front, wears his new prosthetic leg, and from left to right are his mother, Darline; brothers Scarcely and Schmeider; and father, Ducarmel.

By JoNel Aleccia

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti -- Late afternoon on Friday, Ducarmel Similien arrived back at L'Escale with his two older sons, Schmeider, 10, and Scarcely, 13. The boys had been staying in a tent city in Leogane with their grandmother and were anxious to see their baby brother -- and his new prosthetic leg. It was the first time the family had been together since they learned that there was hope for a new limb for Schneily, the 4-year-old who lost his left leg in Haiti's earthquake.

"Everything is different now," said Ducarmel, 40, who discovered that while he was gone, Schneily learned how to walk on his new leg without crutches.

With new hope for his youngest son and the promise of a possible job here at Hopital Albert Schweitzer, Ducarmel and his wife, Darline, 37, say they're looking forward for the first time since Jan. 12.

"Now we have less problems than before," Ducarmel said through a translator.

Ducarmel has heard from family members who saw msnbc.com's series of stories and relayed the outpouring of support for Schneily.

He says his greatest dream is that the boy will one day be able to go to school in the United States, where Schneily would have more opportunities for education and employment. Although the earthquake caused terrible pain to his family -- and to his country, Ducarmel said he relies on faith in the future.

"God has a plan for me and God has a plan for Haiti," he said.

By JoNel Aleccia

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti -- Just two days after getting his new artificial leg, Schneily Similien already has ditched his crutches.

The 4-year-old amputee, who lost his left leg in Haiti's devastating earthquake, is walking on his own, only a little wobbly, slowly making his way toward the open clinic door where his new friends wait.

"Yay!" he says when he sees them, raising his arms high, an unmistakable gesture of victory.

Such quick progress is typical of most kids adapting to prosthetic limbs, says Mary Anne Kramer-Urner, a physical therapist from Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Calif.

"Once they start, they're off," says Kramer-Urner, a volunteer for the aid group Physicians for Peace.

For Schneily and other earthquake amputees -- and those trying to help them -- momentum is vital as they work to recover from disaster. At every level, however, from the individual to the institutional, moving forward is precarious in a place where the next steps are anything but certain.

"Ever since the 12th of January, we've been making it up as we go along," says Ian Rawson, the managing director of the Hopital Albert Schweitzer, where the Hanger Orthopedic Group has set up a new prosthetics lab and clinic.

Assellia Exelant tosses a ball to a fellow amputee during physical therapy exercises aimed at improving balance.

Assellia Exelant lost her left leg in the earthquake, but even that wasn't the worst thing.

The 32-year-old Port-au-Prince woman also lost her husband, Pierre Agent, 41, who died amid falling debris. That left Assellia injured, grieving and responsible for the sole care of her two children, ages 7 and 14.

"It's like most of my life is gone," Exelant says through a translator. It's not a complaint; it's an explanation.

For Exelant, who was running a thriving soda-and-beer concession outside the prime minister's office, there is no choice but to start over. A new prosthetic leg will help, but she knows the rest is up to her.

"I have family who can help out," she says. "But in Haiti, everybody has their own problems."

We are a world apart, but we are the same. Those are the sentiments echoed in multitudes of letters from U.S. amputees who shared their stories with amputees in Haiti. Selected letters were translated for patients at Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschappelles, Haiti.

Elias Brown

One of those letters was from 5-year-old Elias Brown who was moved by the story of Schneily Similien, a boy who lost his lower left leg in the Jan. 12 earthquake. At age 4, Schneily is the youngest patient at the hospital.

Elias, who lives in Austin, Texas, knows what it means to be different. Born with a congenital birth defect, his left leg was amputated when he was 2. He wanted to let Schneily know he wasn't alone, said his mother, Meagan Brown.

"Dear Schneily," Elias wrote, "My leg got amputated when I was 2 years old. And then I got my first prosthetic leg a little bit after that. It's hard to have your leg amputated. Don't be scared because God is with you.

When you get your prosthetic leg we can play together and run. I really hope that I can come to Haiti sometime and we can run and play together. Love, Elias."

In Deschapelles, as an interpreter for msnbc.com read the letter to Schneily's family, the boy's father, Ducarmel, smiled widely and gave a thumbs-up sign. "Amen," he replied.

To read other recent letters sent by readers, click here.

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti -- Joubert Pognon, 46, works as a policeman at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, but he wasn't on the job when the earthquake struck. Instead, Pognon was in the parking lot of his three-level apartment building, where falling debris trapped him.

He spent three days stuck in a sprawling, awkward position, not quite lying, not quite standing, with his crushed left arm pinned above his head. By the time rescuers reached him, it was too late to save the limb.

He's now a patient at the prosthetics clinic at Hopital Albert Schweitzer and is waiting for an advanced artificial arm to arrive from the United States so that he can go back to work. Pognon says he's grateful he didn't lose his right arm, because he's right-handed and will still be able to shoot a gun. Like many earthquake victims, Pognon says he didn't panic during the ordeal. "I believe in God," he said.

Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, lost her legs in 2004 after a rocket-propelled grenade hit the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting in Iraq. Here, she's shown arriving at the World War II Memorial for a ceremony honoring World War II veterans on March 11, 2010 in Washington D.C.

Tammy Duckworth was prepared to die for her country. But the Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot never expected to return home severely injured. Helicopter pilots who are hit by enemy fire usually perish in a fire when their aircraft crashes.

"I thought I'd come home in a box or I'd be fine," she says, of her time serving in the Iraq War. But when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, severing her legs, she went from "being a hotshot stud helicopter pilot to near death in a split second."

Her story, told in her own words, concludes msnbc.com's series of essays by Iraq war veterans who, like the victims of the Haiti earthquake, are a growing number of amputees learning to rebuild their lives after limb loss.

Duckworth was nominated last year by President Barack Obama to serve as the Department of Veterans Affairs' assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs. She's also completed the Chicago Marathon, fulfilling a promise she made to herself when she was recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center. She continues to serve as a major in the National Guard.

By Tammy Duckworth

When events like that happen, your training kicks in. You just do the job that you have trained to do, because it takes everyone in your crew doing their job, to get out safely. I was in and out of consciousness. The last thing I remember thinking was that I needed to try and do an emergency engine shutdown to prevent a fire. I didn't realize that I had been severely injured. I didn't know my legs were gone. My brain and body just kept trying to fly.

By JoNel Aleccia

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti -- Even in a community of amputees, John Markinley has seen more than his share of trauma.

The 21-year-old student from Port-au-Prince lost most of his left hand and part of his right leg in his country's disastrous earthquake, which trapped him for three days in the rubble of his school until rescuers could find and free him.

"I just waited," he says. "I knew they would come and get me."

But Markinley refuses to dwell on his disability -- and he doesn't let others stay down, either. As the unofficial ambassador of L'Escale, a housing community set up for prosthetics patients treated at the nearby Hopital Albert Schweitzer, the tall young man with the quick smile believes it's his job to be upbeat.

"I try to give joke, to give comedy," Markinley says in his best English, a language he studied in school and practiced on his own. "The doctor told me that the best thing that's good for stress is to laugh."

And there's actually a lot of laughing going on at L'Escale, where the population has shot up just this week to some five dozen people ranging from young children to grandparents. All around the compound of eight four-room houses, residents are chatting and joking, playing the card game "Casino," listening to Haitian hip-hop on the radio and generally hanging out on this sultry spring evening.

They're all either amputees who spend their days trying out new limbs at the Hanger prosthetics clinic at the hospital or family members and friends who've come to support them.

"It's a built-in community for them," says Mandy McGlynn, a physical therapist from the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute who just finished a two-week stint at the Hanger clinic.

Strangers who arrived traumatized and depressed by the events of the past two months have become companions bonded by empathy and understanding, say patients and hospital organizers alike.

Mannuela Sainterne practices walking on her new prosthetic leg with the help of physical therapist Mary Anne Kramer-Urner. Sainterne's right leg was amputated 22 years ago because of disease, but she's never been able to afford a prosthetic.

By JoNel Aleccia

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti -- For Mannuela Sainterne, the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake may actually make her daily life better than before.

She's part of a small group of amputees injured before Jan. 12 who suddenly find themselves eligible for free limbs from aid workers who say they'll take all comers, regardless of the cause of their injury.

"How could you possibly say, 'You're not from the earthquake, so we won't help?'" said Jay Tew, the prosthetics expert running the new rehabilitation program at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer.

So far, they've treated patients who've also lost limbs to disease, violence and congenital abnormalities, all common causes of amputation.

Sainterne, a regal woman in a pink headscarf and purple dress, doesn't know her age, but guesses she might be 40. She lives in the mountains outside Deschapelles. She's been without a right leg for 22 years, ever since doctors at HAS had to amputate it above the knee to stave off a disease whose name she doesn't remember.

Since then, she's gotten by on rough wooden crutches now worn and scarred by years of use. This week, she was learning to walk on brand-new artificial leg supplemented by a pair of high-tech metal crutches.

"Before, you had to have money to get a leg," Sainterne said through a translator.

Staff Sgt. John Olson was on patrol in Iraq with his Army unit on Oct. 27, 2003 when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade that tore off his right leg.

Josh Olson became one of the first soldiers to lose his leg at the hip level in the Iraq war when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while on patrol in 2003. He was a 23-year-old Army staff sergeant when he had to grapple with the situation so many Haitians are suddenly facing.

His story, told in his own words, continues msnbc.com's special series of essays from amputee veterans recounting what it means to rebuild your life after losing a limb.

By Josh Olson, with Linda Dahlstrom

The night of Oct. 27, 2003, we were patrolling town when a rocket hit the back of the vehicle. A second rocket, the one that hit me, came about 90 seconds later. At first I thought I'd just gotten shot and I tried to walk it off. I did a quick physical inventory like they teach us: I checked my arms and hands and they were OK, but when I reached down to my right leg, I realized I had a problem.

By JoNel Aleccia

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti -- Schneily Similien doesn't want to wait a minute longer.

The 4-year-old Haitian boy who lost his left leg in the earthquake has just arrived for another visit at the clinic where he knows that today he's supposed to get an artificial limb.

He sees more than a dozen grown-up amputees wearing their legs, and, like any preschooler, he wants one, too.

"Papa! Papa! Go get my leg for me," he calls out in Haitian Creole. "Papa, get my foot so I can walk."

Schneily's father, Ducarmel Similien, also spelled Cimilien, is as anxious as anyone to see this new contraption, the device that's supposed to make his son whole again.

Still, he urges the rambunctious boy to be patient -- and brave.

"We're waiting, we're waiting," he says to his son. "Remember, don't cry when they put it on."

There seems to be little chance of that when prosthetics expert Jay Tew shows up a few minutes later with the leg. Tew is the manager of the newly launched Hanger Orthopedic Group clinic at Hopital Albert Schweitzer and Schneily is, so far, the youngest of some 85 patients.

The boy opens his eyes wide and giggles at the sight of the leg before hopping quickly on his crutches into the fitting room. He smiles as Tew powders his residual limb, a smooth stump of dark skin.

Tew slides a sock on the boy's limb, then a liner, then the leg. Over that he smoothes a sleeve that will hold the limb on Schneily's body.

Finally, it's time to walk.

Schneily slides off the bench where he's sitting and steps gingerly onto the floor. The leg is a little short, Tew says, and they'll need to adjust it later.

Schneily will need new shoes, too, two of them, for proper fitting, and he gives someone, anyone, money to rush to the nearby market to find a pair of size 6 children's sneakers.

Meanwhile, Schneily takes one step, then two, and then looks anxiously toward his dad. The smile is gone. His left knee buckles a bit.

"Stand up tall, up tall," Tew urges in English, frustrated once again that he doesn't speak Creole.

As Tew holds him, Schneily takes a few more hard, wobbly steps away from the bench, then back before Tew sits him down.

"Yay!" Tew cheers, slapping Schneily's hand. "High five!"

A few feet away, Ducarmel watches the process intently until Schneily is done. Then, the 40-year-old carpenter, a man who has trekked across hundreds of miles in post-quake Haiti to get help for this child, walks over to the corner of the room, bows his head against the cinder block wall -- and cries.

Prosthetist Gil Mejia from Richmond, Va., makes a cast of the residual limb of earthquake victim Emmanuele Lundy, from Port-au-Prince. The cast is the first step in the process of creating a custom fit prosthetic leg. Here Mejia presses his thumbs into the fiberglass to make indentations around the big tendon just below the kneecap to create extra snugness in a spot where the amputee's limb can carry more weight.

After removing the cast, technicians fill it with plaster and insert a metal rod, visible in foreground. Once the plaster dries, it can be handled by the rod as the fiberglass cast is cut away, as Dubreille Elinor, left, is doing here. The resulting plaster shapes, several of which are visible at right beyond Elinor, are models of the individual amputees' stumps. Custom prosthetics are then built to fit these models.

Prosthetist Jay Tew applies a dense foam wrapper to the plaster model, shaping the first layer of the "socket," the part of the prosthetic that holds the residual limb. This foam layer acts like the inner sole of a shoe -- a firmly cushioned lining in the eventual prosthetic.

CANGE, Haiti -- Teacher Gerome Lausier was in his Port-au-Prince classroom when the earthquake hit, collapsing the school and killing many of his sixth- and seventh-grade students. His left arm and hand were crushed in the rubble.

Doctors had to amputate just below the shoulder to save the life of the left-handed father of three. Lausier, in his late 30s, traveled 40 miles to Zanmi Lasante, a small hospital in Cange, where he has been measured and fitted for a new arm that he hopes will allow him to return to work.

Friends before the earthquake, Carmene Geurrier, 16, left, and Mike Shelove Julmiste, 25, visit with each other after having their prosthetics adjusted in Cange, Haiti.

By JoNel Aleccia

CANGE, Haiti -- Carmene Geurrier and Mike Shelove Julmiste were childhood friends before the earthquake, girls from Port-au-Prince who grew up knowing the same games and songs.

Now young women, they've forged an even tighter bond under nearly unimaginable circumstances: both are earthquake amputees, learning to walk on new limbs at a remote medical clinic in Haiti.

"When I'm alone, I'm stressing, but when I have a friend like her, I am happy," says Carmene, 16, through a translator. She lost both legs below the knee on Jan. 12, when her house collapsed.

"I feel the same," says her friend, who goes by Shelove, a 25-year-old who lost most of her left leg when her home crumbled around her.

The pair found each other again at Zanmi Lasante, a small hospital in the rugged mountains of Cange, nearly 40 miles from Port-au-Prince. Like hundreds of other earthquake victims, they were brought here by worried family members because of the reputation of its founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, a Boston infection control specialist whose organization Partners in Health champions health care in Haiti and much of the developing world.

Indeed, Shelove says it was "Dr. Paul" who told them to be patient and wait because a medical crew was going to bring them new limbs.

Last week it happened, when a crew from the Hanger Orthopedics Group stationed at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles came to fit the girls with prosthetic legs.

"I feel OK now because I got my legs," says Carmene, who now sports clear plastic shoes with bows slipped over her two artificial feet. "But if I didn't get the legs, I would not feel good at all."

Before the quake, Carmene was a high school student and Shelove was studying at a local university. The disaster changed everything. Now Carmene lives with extended family in Mirabalais, a city near Port-au-Prince. Shelove's family went to live with extended family, too, but she doesn't know if there's room for her in the home. Like many Haitians, the young women don't speculate about the future, prefering to concentrate only on today. Right now, that means their new limbs.

When msnbc.com asked our readers who've suffered from limb loss to share their stories with amputees in Haiti, many responded with words of encouragement and hope hard earned by their own journeys.

"My heart goes out to each and every one of you who suffer limb loss," said Debbie Bean, who lost her hands and feet due to meningococcal virus. "But I would like to offer some words of encouragement to you. Every day that goes by you will find yourself a little stronger, a little more eager to do the things that make you happy."

One reader, who lost his arm in an accident, said that while his body was injured, his spirit was still whole. "We may have lost our limbs but we are still the same people."

A father of four whose arm was amputated following a car accident wrote to say he had to push past the limitations others tried to place on him. "I do not feel I have anything to prove. I just want to live my life to the fullest," he wrote. "I continue to enjoy playing softball, golfing and riding motorcycle. There have been times of depression and self pity but over those times I have learned to focus on what I have rather than what I do not have."

Some say they've found new meaning in helping others, such as through the Amputee Coalition of America's peer-to-peer outreach program. "When you begin to become strong again, reach out to other amputees," wrote Robert Bailey of Baton Rouge, La., who lost both his legs in a tractor accident. "All those feelings and questions you thought no one understood, they do. Many, many amputees find strength in themselves that they never knew they had."

Click here to read recent letters.

If you'd like to write a letter to be published, please enter it in the comments field below. Selected letters are being translated this week and shared with some of those who lost limbs in Haiti's earthquake, including 4-year-old Schneily Similien.

Many of msnbc.com's readers have been so moved by Schneily's story that they've asked how to help. The best way is by donating to Hopital Albert Schweitzer, where he is receiving treatment this week, and the Haitian Amputee Coalition which is helping to provide prosthetic fittings and rehabilitation there. Donations will be used to fund his ongoing treatment and that of hundreds of other patients.

By JoNel Aleccia

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti -- Darline Similien climbs off the back of a motorcycle in the blazing morning sun and sweeps her youngest son, Schneily, into her arms, mindful of the 4-year-old's missing leg.

She sees visitors with cameras and pauses, shy about her appearance after a 5 1/2-hour road trip by bus and by bike. But Schneily just hugs her tighter.

"You're not ugly mama," the brown-eyed boy with a headful of braids says in lyrical Creole."You look nice, Mama."

It's been only four days since Darline has seen Schneily and his father, Ducarmel, but for the family on a desperate quest for a prosthetic limb to replace the boy's left leg, crushed in the earthquake, everything has changed.

Finally, they've made it to the Hopital Albert Schweitzer, where a group called the Haitian Amputee Coalition has begun providing free prosthetics for victims of the Jan. 12 temblor. It's Schneily's best hope for a better life, but getting the child to Deschapelles was anything but easy.

Msnbc.com first introduced readers to Schneily Similien, also spelled Cimilien, soon after the quake, as Ducarmel vowed to do anything to get his boy a limb.

Less than a week ago, the family got word that Schneily could get help, but only if he made it to the hospital, more than 80 miles from the tent city in Leogane, where the family has been living since the quake destroyed their home.

Transportation there for a single adult usually costs about 250 in gourdes, the Haitian currency. That's about $6 U.S., but far too pricey for a family with no work since the disaster and little money left to survive on.

"If I had to get here on my own, it would have been almost impossible," Ducarmel, a 40-year-old carpenter, said through an interpreter.

Jay Tew, a prosthetics expert with Hanger Orthopedics Group holds the prosthetic lower leg being made for 4-year-old Haiti amputee Schneily Similien. Tew and his crew at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer are working around the clock to create limbs for victims of the January earthquake.

By JoNel Aleccia

DESCHAPELLES, HAITI -- Seventy-three legs, 12 arms.

If anyone's counting, that's how many prosthetic limbs Jay Tew of Baton Rogue, La., has turned out for earthquake amputees in Haiti in the past three weeks.

The 38-year-old clinician and his crew have been working dawn to dark at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer, an 80-bed medical center more than 60 miles from the country's capital city, Port-au-Prince.

In a clinic housed in a converted classroom, Tew has been fitting, forming, sanding, painting and testing limb after limb for the steady stream of amputees who've made it to the rural outpost.

"I don't think we're going to stop seeing new patients for some time," said Tew, a regional manager for Hanger Orthopedic Group. "They say there may be hundreds of people here once the flood gates open up."

With the help of U.S. prosthetic maker Hanger, the rural hospital founded by American philanthropist William Larimer Mellon, Jr. is rapidly becoming a center for rehabilitation -- and hope -- for Haiti's amputees.

"If I can say there's an oasis in Haiti, we're in it," says Tew, glancing around the spare clinic with its cinder block walls and cement floors that wouldn't normally constitute luxury.

So far, the hospital has been able to manufacture and deliver vital prosthetic limbs for men, women and children, patients who test their new arms and legs by dancing to music and kicking soccer balls each evening

On a hot, humid evening, more than 30 patients and their family members lounged on the porches of eight small block houses in L'Escale, an area set aside to shelter amputees who have nowhere else to go.

They laughed and chatted in animated Haitian Creole, teasing, telling stories and calling greetings to passersby. One 10-year-old boy raced to see how fast he could get across the stony ground on the crutches he'll use until his new leg is ready.

"One doesn't have right leg, one doesn't have a left leg, one doesn't have a hand," said Ian Rawson, the HAS director. "They're all there together, playing music. They've created a lovely community."

It's a community forged out of tragedy and need. Even before the earthquake, an estimated 40,000 to 64,000 Haitians were so disabled by trauma or disease they needed prostheses, leg braces or other rehabilitation services, said Robert Kistenberg, who heads the U.S. chapter of the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics. The earthquake added another 4,000 to 6,000 amputees to the toll in an instant, according to estimates by the aid group Handicap International and the Haitian government.

Mona Patel's whole adult life stretched out ahead of her on the day a drunk driver hit her as she walked across her college campus.

The 17-year-old underwent 20 surgeries, and ultimately the amputation of her right leg.

"My main concern was of my abilities to care for babies as an amputee," said Patel, now 37.

Today, Patel, and her husband, Nishat, have two daughters, Anaya, 7, and Arianna, 5. While it hasn't always been easy, she found her way right from the moment her oldest daughter was born, she said.

"I had to learn how to do things differently and a bit slower perhaps, but nonetheless, I feel that did just fine," she said.

When Patel and her daughters heard about the Haiti earthquake, they cried together, knowing what it would mean for those who would now have to cope with life as amputee.

Patel lives in San Antonio, but if she could sit at the bedside of a woman in Haiti who lost a limb, she'd tell her that a full life can still be ahead. Read on for Patel's letter.

If you'd like to write one of your own to be published, please enter it in the comments field below. A selection of submissions will be translated and given to those who recently lost limbs in Haiti at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer.

In an instant, the earthquake that rattled Haiti on Jan. 12 created as many as 6,000 amputees, people who lost limbs either from direct injury or the complications and infections that followed.

Aid experts said this ranks among the largest-ever loss of limbs in a single natural disaster, and propelled Haiti to the epicenter of an existing global amputation crisis.

"We've seen many amputees, but nowhere near the magnitude of this," said Ivan R. Sabel, chairman of Hanger Orthopedic Group, which launched the Haitian Amputee Coalition to respond to the problem.

The earthquake galvanized the international prosthetics community, prompting promises of limbs, supplies and staff to help rebuild bodies devastated by the temblor and its aftermath.

Already some two dozen prosthetics groups are setting up shop, and plans are in place to distribute rehabilitation services across the country, including Hanger's site at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, 60 miles outside Port-au-Prince, where msnbc.com is tracking the stories of amputees as they rebuild their lives.

But even as attention is riveted on those who've lost limbs in Haiti, experts warn that the tragedy there highlights a grim reality: the number of amputees worldwide is rising -- and fast.

Four-year-old Schneily Similien's left leg was crushed in Haiti's earthquake.

By JoNel Aleccia, msnbc.com

Schneily Similien still needs a new leg.

The 4-year-old Haitian boy's left calf and foot were crushed when the Jan. 12 earthquake rocked his country and destroyed his house, sending pieces of concrete ceiling crashing down on the child and his family.

For five days, no medical care could be found in the wrecked capital city, Port-au-Prince, and by the time Schneily's parents, Ducarmel, 40, and Darline, 37, got him to a hospital, amputation was the only option.

Msnbc.com first introduced readers to Schneily Similien (also spelled Cimilien) soon after the quake, as prosthetics groups began assessing the staggering need in Haiti and Ducarmel vowed to do anything to get a limb for his boy.

"People tend not to take into account the needs of disabled people and it changes your life," Schneily's father said through a translator. "They don't consider you a whole person."

Two months after the horrible disaster that claimed at least 230,000 lives and left a million people homeless, Schneily remains among an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 amputees left to struggle in a rugged, impoverished land where if you don't work, you don't eat and there's little regard for the disabled.

His greatest hope for a new limb -- and a new life -- may lie at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer, an 80-bed oasis in the rural heart of Haiti, where the American prosthetic firm Hanger Orthopedic Group has set up an amputee rehabilitation center.

Joseph Bates knows what it means to become an amputee in a moment. Shortly before his Marine unit deployed to Iraq he was driving home when an SUV turned suddenly in to his lane, throwing his motorcycle, mangling his body and ultimately costing him his leg. "I was just going through a normal day - and in Haiti they were just having a normal day - and this jumped out and grabbed me."

Today, Bates is part of the Amputee Coalition of America's peer-to-peer support program where he visits new amputees to show them that life can still be rich and full. While there isn't a peer-to-peer program currently in Haiti, Bates is one of those partnering with msnbc.com to create a virtual version and build a bridge with letters to the new amputees there.

If you're living with an amputation and would like to send a letter sharing your experiences and insight with amputees in Haiti, please enter it in the comment field below for publication. A selection will be translated and given to the patients at Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, Haiti.

Kortney Clemons was weeks away from finishing his tour in the Iraq war when a roadside bomb exploded and destroyed his right leg. Two years after losing his limb, Kortney became the fastest 100-meter runner in the country for his disability category.

With the flash of a roadside bomb, everything that Kortney Clemons had ever known changed. As a U.S. Army medic in Iraq, he was a week away from returning home when the blast took his right leg above the knee.

Just as thousands of Haitians a world away are grappling with the traumatic loss of a limb and a sudden shift in identity, so are U.S. soldiers who fought in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

With more soldiers surviving their wounds thanks to medical advances, they're now living with the loss of limbs at a greater rate than in any U.S. conflict, except for the Persian Gulf War, according to the Department of Defense.

As of July 2009, 1,112 American soldiers sustained an amputation in the Iraq war; 112 in the Afghanistan conflict, according to the DOD's most recent count.

Over the next week, amputee veterans will be recounting their experiences in their own words, sharing what it means to live, as thousands of Haitians now do, after a sudden amputation leaves them facing a future they'd never imagined.

Kortney Clemons, a 29-year-old veteran of the Iraq war, begins our series. Clemons won first place in the 100-meter sprint in the 2008 U.S. Paralympics Track & Field National Championships. He currently trains full time at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., as part of the Paralympic Track & Field Resident Team, in hopes of qualifying for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London. His right leg was amputated above the knee when he was 25.

By Kortney Clemons, with Linda Dahlstrom