Natick – Heidi Thompson says she’d rather put a gun to her head than sit down in a wheelchair.

“If I can’t get there on my own steam, I don’t want to go,” she said.

Getting places on her own steam, though, is more complicated for Thompson than for most people. The Natick resident’s entire left leg up to the hip socket was amputated at age 4 when she suffered from bone cancer.

For most of the 32-year-old’s life, she had difficulty finding a comfortable prosthetic leg because her amputation – known as a hip disarticulation – is rare and more complicated to fit with a prosthetic.

By the time she entered high school Thompson all but abandoned the use of a prosthetic leg, opting instead to get around with a crutch, which allowed her to walk faster than on an artificial leg.

But recently she decided it was time to find a leg she could be comfortable with. “God forbid, what if I broke my left wrist and I couldn’t use my crutch,” she noted.

Not only that, but twice her crutch broke in an airport. The latest time was in San Francisco last year, an incident that forced her to take a ride in a wheelchair. Though she says she doesn’t care what people think about her appearance, her pride makes it difficult not to be able to move under her own power.

“It was mortifying,” she said of the wheelchair ride. “That was pretty much the final straw.”

While local prosthetists say high-class services are available in Massachusetts, Thompson opted to have a leg made for her in Oklahoma City, Okla., at the well-known Scott Sabolich Prosthetics & Research. She learned of the center from a TV new show about its treatment of Paralympic athletes.

“I really did want to go to the best place in the country, because I have a difficult amputation,” Thompson said.

Thompson, who enjoys bicycling and swimming, spent three weeks last month in Oklahoma getting fitted with a C-Leg, a state-of-the-art prosthetic that includes a microprocessor-controlled knee and shin system.

The microprocessor determines the phase of a person’s gait using algorithms developed after studying how thousands of people walk, according the Web site of Otto Bock HealthCare, the company that makes the product. Based on that information, it makes adjustments to provide stability.

It was Thompson’s first new prosthetic leg in more than 10 years, and she was both surprised by progress in the field and by how little has changed. She had gotten a prosthetic in 1993 but rarely used it.

In her new leg, the computer in the knee makes 50 adjustments a second to compensate for changes in her walk, allowing her to walk down stairs foot over foot, sje said. It’s a major improvement over previous technology, but she noted that her new leg hooks onto her in the same way prosthetics have been attached to hip disartics for years.

Trey Martin, Thompson’s prosthetist at Sabolich, notes “the prosthesis has to go completely around her waist, which is a lot more invasive and a lot harder to fit for comfort.”

Thompson’s new leg and related care cost nearly $82,000 – but was paid in full by her insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, she says. Her only costs were for the hotel, food and gas for the car trip to Oklahoma.

Prosthetists say hip disarticulations make up a small percentage of amputations. Nearly 1.3 million Americans were living without a limb in 1996, according to the National Limb Loss Information Center.

While Thompson chose to travel out of state, people with similar amputations shouldn’t feel as if proper care is unavailable in Massachusetts, said Kathryn Penney, a prosthetist at Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics Inc. in Worchester.

“All prosthetists are trained to make hip disarticulation prostheses,” she said. “There’s no reason for a patient to have to travel to Oklahoma if they’re local.”

Still, those with hip disarticulations are more likely to travel than most amputees because practitioners often have less experience fitting them than people with more common types of amputations, Martin said. The Sabolich center’s prominence in the prosthetics industry has allowed it to attract patients from 42 states, according to the center.

While in Oklahoma, Thompson spent a week or so testing a mock-up of her new leg to recommend adjustments that were incorporated into the finished prosthetic, Martin said. The leg is made of a high-tech carbon fiber also used for golf club shafts and airplane wings.

To look realistic, a foam cover and a painted-on coating that is similar to skin was added to the leg. Thompson’s leg, Martin said, even had a personal touch added – a tattoo of a butterfly.

“It looks very realistic,” he said.

Thompson says her new leg is far more comfortable than her past ones, but she’s still getting used to walking with it.

“I’m using muscles in my back that I haven’t used in 20 years,” she said.

Thompson is wearing the leg about six hours each day, and says she will eventually use it all day.

“I can’t wear it constantly,” she said. “It’s like breaking in new shoes.”