My sister in law caught this picture of Sporty playing outside. I love it, it’s so Sporty! 
Sporty Looking Fierce!
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The Treatment
It seems like I’m jumping around a bunch, but it’s for now as I catch up on the last 8 years of life with clubfoot and also how we’re living with it today.
We chose to treat Sporty non-surgically, with a method call the Ponseti method. In short, Ponseti is a series of casts that are used to manipulate the feet to a normal position. If you want a more in depth explanation, see this link.
Sporty had a stubborn left foot. The details are fuzzy, I think she had 7 casts to get into corrected positions, followed by an 8th holding cast while we waited for a spot in the OR. (Remember the hot pink cast!?!) Most children need a tenotomy after casting, this lengthens the Achilles tendon. She then spent 3 weeks in said hot pink casts while her Achilles healed. After casting she wore a brace full time until she was 9 months old (about 6 months). Then we gradually decreased wear until she was in them for 12 hours a day (mostly just at night). We stopped brace wear at 3, some Doctors recommend going until 5. We stopped at 3 because Sporty was starting to take it off at night and we had no indication of the issues to come. She never slipped a cast, never had an issue with her brace, she was a picture perfect case of Ponseti treatment. I also believed if she was going to relapse, she was going to relapse whether it was at 3 or it was at 5, it was going to happen. I had friends who stopped treatment at 2 and have never had an issue and then there was us. It took about a year when I first saw signs of relapse. So at 4 we began our relapse journey.
Sporty’s feet when she was born prior to treatment
2nd (possibly 3rd) cast
After a couple of casts, we see progress
Tenotomy casts (I’m blind!)
Sporty’s brace, this was her first weekend in the brace, it also coincided with Giants’ opening weekend and her very first Giants game. A fan was born!
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Tagged brace and bar, clubfeet, Giants, Ponseti method, treatment
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Play Ball
We had quite the busy week last week. It started with Young Jedi having tee ball practice on Monday, followed by Sporty’s soccer clinic on Tuesday, Sporty’s first softball game on Wednesday
and then softball practice for Sporty on Thursday. (Notice 3 of those 4 sports days were for Sporty!?! Poor Young Jedi.)
Sporty was incredibly excited for her first game, and after the crazy wet winter than we’ve had, it was a beautiful day for her first game. I think part of her excitement stems from the fact that her team is orange and black this year, which of course are Giants’ colors, her favorite team in the entire world but she also thoroughly loves softball. She becomes a different kid out there, she’s focused, confident, and mature beyond her years. She told everyone about her game at school and even invited our neighbors to her first game and they were so amazing to show up, even with a Slurpee in hand with Young Jedi whom definitely deserved it with all of the hanging out he does for Sporty’s many activities.
The whole team played great but the game could not have gone better for Sporty, she was lead off batter and hit 3 for 3 (she scored 2 times even though we don’t keep score). She had some good fielding as well and her cheetah speed is beginning to return. And husband, who had previously explained to Sporty that he wouldn’t be able to make her game because of work, surprised her and was there before her first at bat (which was her best hit of the game!). She was elated leaving the game.
The most amazing part of the game, she left the game PAIN FREE! This is the first time since December 1 when she had her tendon transfer that she has been pain free. Just shy of 4 months for her to get there. She had to sacrifice running club the last two weeks and has taken it as easy as Sporty is capable of taking it easy but she’s there. She is pain free and loving it. And I am loving that even more than her successes on the field because deep down, with all of the struggles we have had this go-round with the surgery, with all of the pain she’s had physically and emotionally, I’ve wondered whether or not I made the right decision for her. I worry daily that I put her in a position of pain when she was functioning just fine and competing. What if this surgery was for nothing? But she turned the corner, she’s pain free. She walked off of the softball field, elated, loving the game, and not dying to get off of her feet for a rest! My girl who keeps fighting no matter how hard clubfoot tries to knock her down.
That One Time…
Well this blog wouldn’t be all that it’s destined to be if I didn’t dedicate a post to that time I had two kids in full leg casts for a month. Yeah, it was awesomely good times…said no mother EVER!
Let’s see, I think Sporty was probably like 10 days post-op and she was in a non-weight baring cast when our Young Jedi went to a party at one of those trampoline parks. You know, the ones that Dr Fluffy Unicorn has urged me to stay away from for oh 8 years!! I was catching up with a friend when the birthday girl’s dad came running to me to tell me the Young Jedi had gotten hurt. I ran out to him, scooped him up, he was crying hysterically (which isn’t uncommon for him). I brought him to the side and tried to calm him with an Icee, thinking he was faking (hi, mom of the year here, nice to meet you). He wouldn’t stand on it, so I carried all 48lbs of him out of the trampoline place, to the car, inside the house and up to his room for a nap. He napped for 2 hours, still wouldn’t stand on it and when he woke me up at 2am to say his leg still hurt, I went online to make an appointment with his pediatrician, thinking it was a sprain.
Flash forward to 10:45 Monday morning and the Dr comes in to exam him. Young Jedi repeatedly points to his knee as the source of pain. The Dr doesn’t see any indication of a break or significant injury but as a precaution he sends us down for x-rays. We come back up to the pediatrician to wait for x-ray results. The pediatrician sees the x-rays and doesn’t see a glaring break (it’s like 12:45 by now) so he ace bandages Young Jedi’s knee and sends us home to wait for radiology to read the x-rays. We’re halfway free and I hear “Mrs. Z can you and Young Jedi come back to the exam room, I need to speak with you regarding the x-ray.” Son of a….I knew then and there it was broken. Of course it was…
Young Jedi received a buckle fracture. The best I could understand the story from him (since I wasn’t watching, cause you know, I’m mom of the year since I thought he was faking and an icee would fix his broken bone!) is he was jumping on a trampoline square, an adult came and jumped on the same square, making he jump higher than he should have and when he landed his bone buckled and fractured, right at the top of the tibia.
So the Dr wanted to give him a soft cast until we could get into an orthopedic surgeon. (Good thing I know a good one!) Yeah, that went over just about as well as you could have expected after being at the Dr for 2 1/2 hours during lunch and nap and oh did I mention we were pressing the clock at 1:15 to go get Sporty by 2:00??? So I really needed Young Jedi to cooperate. Haha, he never cooperates. One pediatrician, me and 2 nurses later we had Young Jedi pinned down enough to get a temporary cast on him. I’m shocked that they’ve let us back into the office after the fit he pitched. Then they wanted me to see their practice’s orthopedic surgeon, whom I sure is fantastic but I wanted to go to Dr Fluffy Unicorn so there was a lot of guilt from the Dr going on especially after I called Dr Fluffy Unicorn’s appointment line and they wouldn’t get him in until Friday! The fact that I started laughing hysterically when they told me his leg was fractured probably didn’t increase their confidence that I was a capable mother and had the ability to get him to an orthopedic surgeon.
I carried him out of there sobbing (both of us), we got Sporty and then I did something I’ve never done. I called in a favor at Dr Fluffy Unicorn’s office. It went something like this:
Guy Answers Phone: “Dr Fluffy Unicorn’s office”
Me: “Hi, this is Mrs Z, is Office Assistant there?”
Guy: Please hold.
Office Assistant come on,
“HI! Is Sporty ok?”
Me: “She’s fine but it’s Young Jedi.”
Office Assistant: “Oh did he finally break something?”
Me: “Yes, only took 5 years but he has a buckle fracture on his right tibia, I have the x-rays, can Dr Fluffy Unicorn see him to cast him and look at the fracture.”
Office Assistant: “Come in tomorrow at 10:00.”
Seriously!?! Why can’t everything be that easy.
We go in Tuesday at 10am to see the Physician’s Assistant (Dr Fluffy Unicorn was in surgery), she’s awesome and has been a part of Sporty’s treatment from almost the beginning, so I was comfortable with her treating him. She looks at the x-ray, takes a picture and texts it to Dr Fluffy Unicorn and all she says is “Sporty’s brother.”
He texts back and says “Tell Mrs Z I am sorry.” Followed by laughing emojis, knowing it meant a full leg cast.
Young Jedi actually took it pretty well, no tears, picked bright yellow to match Sporty’s full leg cast and fully milked his inability to be mobile. Good thing I didn’t sell my UppaBaby stroller as I now had 100lbs of kid in full-leg casts.
Let me tell you, bath times were no easy task, oh and have I mentioned this is the year mother nature decided it was a fine time to take California OUT of our 5 year long drought!?! We were quite the lovely site getting to school covered in trash bags during the rain storms. I’ll get to the stares, stares deserve a post of their own.
So for the bulk of December and into January we were a two cast family. Both kids celebrated their actual birthdays in casts and our saving grace was they were able to align the week that both casts came off so we got a BOGO on that visit.
So that’s the time that I had two kids in full length casts, because you can’t make that sort of thing up!
Memory Monday
I came across this gem on my Timehop this morning. Crazy to think that Sporty’s first surgery was 8 years
ago (and look how small she is, I’m guesing she’s still around 6lbs here!). It’s funny how I remember so vividly her diagnosis but casting and her tenotomy (the name of her first surgery) are all a blur, these were the first 3-4 months of her life and I can barely remember it. For her tenotomy, I basically remember that we walked into post-op at Children’s Hospital Oakland (she had to have it done there due to her being premature and needing anesthesia since she’s bilateral) and there our Sporty was, looking all tiny in the nurses arms waking up from the anesthesia with this BIG BRIGHT HOT PINK CASTS! It’s quite possible that her casts weighed more than she did at this point. I also remember the anesthesiologist wanting to admit Sporty due to her gestational age and her low weight. She had her surgery on a Friday and on Monday we were putting my beloved dog, Homer to sleep due to organ failure. Dr Fluffy Unicorn knew this and knew my desire to spend the last few nights with Homer. Sporty was stable too, she had no issues during surgery or waking up and was feeding fine, so he went to bat for us to let Sporty come home for the night. I don’t remember her pain or discomfort, they sent us home with dosages for baby Tylenol. I vaguely remember her being a little uncomfortable the first few days but she also took great joy in a little game we referred to as the “whale tail.” In this game, Sporty found infinite delight in pounding her casts against any and every surface that she came in contact with, bodies were not excluded from her little game. The scars from her first surgery are gone now, I also remember how worried we were about scars later on on life. Little did we know we had two tendon transfers in our future and these little tenotomy pokes were the least of our worries. It’s funny what our brains remember, isn’t it?
Flash forward 8 years…and this is how we spent our Sunday morning. Unfortunately, Sporty’s first softball game got rained out (she was super bummed, she’s so ready to get out and play!) but we were able to get pictures in on Sunday morning followed by a Hit, Pitch, and Run competition that they hold each year in partnership with MLB. Sporty’s age group can’t move on but they do pick a league winner for bragging rights. Unfortunately, Sporty’s “cheetah speed” hasn’t returned post surgery so she lost some points on the running part, which ironically, was her best part last year. Fortunately, she didn’t seem too upset about being the slowest of her teammates that competed, she also has a cough and cold so she could have blamed that for her slow speed, I didn’t want to bring it up, if she was upset I would have know by her body language and she would have gotten quiet. I don’t want to create self consciousness in her over her feet, she knows what she’s been through and we’re working on self awareness so she knows when she’s tired and her feet need a break. I don’t want her feet to become an excuse for not competing or trying or for not performing how she would like. We’ve always lived normally in spite of her feet and I don’t want this latest surgery to change that. Throwing, however, she nailed, last year she didn’t hit the target at all for the throwing portion and this year she hit it once plus she came within a half an inch for most of her other throws, major improvements from Miss Crazy Arm last year. So while her running score took a little hit, her throwing improved and she said her score improved overall versus last year (I have no idea how she knows this!) and so she was happy with her results, that was her goal she said.
The thing about clubfoot, is you never know what each month, week or even day can bring. One day you could be the star patient, the next day you could be facing regression, it hits fast and it hits quietly and it’s different for each patient and even each time. We say it’s like a Ninja. It comes in and turns life upside down and quite honestly, I hate it. I want it to be predictable, I want Sporty’s “cheetah speed” back, I want to know what her future holds, I want to know if surgery was the right decision, because if her “cheetah speed” doesn’t come back, she may never forgive me.
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Tagged casts, cheetah speed, clubfeet, memory monday, surgery
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The Selection Process
You’ll soon learn from us that with every event there is a process, a good story that goes along with us, a shenanigan. There’s the time my husband asked the on-call pediatrician that was assigned to our son after his birth if a circumcision was a procedure that she enjoyed performing, there was no way that she could ever answer that one correctly! There’s also the time that we bought a new washer machine from Sears (given their current financial situation, we should have known better) and the delivery guys broke the washer on install and didn’t tell us and we found water gushing out of the back of our washer in our second story laundry room. Awesome-sauce!
The time my husband found a screw driver in his rear tire on St Patrick’s Day at 8pm (serves him right for leaving work so late, I say!) and OnStar didn’t show up for 14 hours (lucky guy got a night in the Crowne Plaza. Seriously, what I wouldn’t do for a night alone in the Crowne Plaza!). We used to say our 20s were for making stupid mistakes, our 30s were for getting it together and by 40 we should have it together. Well, we’re quickly approaching 40 (him next month, so get on it hubby) and we SO don’t have it together.
So naturally as we chose a Dr for Sporty there was bound to be a good story. When I first got diagnosed with the clubfeet I was referred to a yahoo support group, nosurgeryforclubfoot. The moms on the group were SOOOO helpful and reassuring in those early, very scary days. I’ve maintained friendships with many of them and they armed me with a list of questions to take to potential Drs. Do you practice Ponseti? What’s your relapse rate? Are you Ponseti certified? The list went on. Armed with my list of questions, we interviewed Drs…
We met with one potential Dr at a well renowned Children’s Hospital. His physicians assistant was extremely nice on the phone, happy to have a potential new patient to take care of, she loved clubfoot babies because she got to watch them transform and grow, so I was optimistic. His office was far (like 40-50 minutes without traffic) but it would be worth it for the best care. We got there and he walked in with three medical students (it is affiliated with a university so I don’t know why I was taken aback by this) and he didn’t take his hand off of the door knob the entire time (all 5 minutes) that we met with him. He could not get out of the room fast enough! What would treatment with Sporty be like? Would he rush through it? If he didn’t have time for us, to make us feel better (didn’t he see how scared and worried we were???), to talk to us, did we want him to be our Dr for life? (Because yes, clubfoot is for life, at least it seems like it will be for us.) Um, he was a big fat NO!
Then we met with a highly recommended Dr who was fairly local. He answered all of our questions, walked us through treatment and then said he preferred for mom to breastfeed while he was casting the baby. Say what!?! Can I give her a bottle instead I asked. He preferred breastfeeding, not in a “oh it’s just nature” way but in a creepy way. This time we couldn’t get out of there fast enough!
First of all, how do we land ourselves in these crazy positions but most of all we left feeling very discouraged. This left one Dr on our list of Drs to interview. If he didn’t work out, well, that would mean traveling to either Shriner’s in Sacramento, which is amazing at treating clubfoot but as a new mom, I was completely overwhelmed with the prospect of having to drive 2 hours each way, every week for cast changes, we have no family local so as soon as Hubby went back to work, it would be all on me. Or traveling to Southern California for treatment, in that scenario, at least my parents would be there to help. But still not ideal, the initial casting phase can take weeks, for us it was about 9 weeks of weekly casting changes, did I want to travel for 2+ months!?! Plus, I really wanted a local Dr for those crazy new mom panic calls.
We finally had our appointment at our final potential Drs office, our last chance at local treatment. From the minute we walked in we felt, well, at home. His office staff was kind and supportive. He sat down and answered all of our questions. He didn’t ask me to breastfeed in front of him, double bonus for him. He had a daughter with clubfoot and overall we just felt the fit. We walked out of there, looked at each other and said “Done.”
On January 12th, 2009, at 8am when Sporty was not even 6 hours old and the moment his office opened, we made the call and scheduled our first appointment with him. We later had to reschedule when Sporty had to be readmitted for jaundice and low body temperature so finally, at 12 days old, we started treatment with him and we’ve never looked back.
From day one he and his office staff have been remarkable. When I was stressed and overwhelmed his office administrator would scoop Sporty up and walk her around to give me a break. To this day she still refers to Sporty as “her baby.” She visited Sporty at the hospital before work after Sporty’s first tendon transfer and always takes care of us (ie she is always very well stocked with lollipops). She gave Sporty her first piece of gum (when she was out of those lollipops).
And then there is Dr Fluffy Unicorn (Sporty’s name for him after their bond over Despicable Me post-op and while she was on morphine). Dr Fluffy Unicorn has always treated Sporty with the most superior care, has referred to her as “one of our own,” and offered to send us to St Louis (where one of the best clubfoot Drs in the world practices) for a second opinion when discussing surgery. Everything Sporty can do, we owe to Dr Fluffy Unicorn (his name makes him sound super qualified and important, doesn’t it???). I don’t think Dr Fluffy Unicorn will ever understand what he’s done for our family (maybe he does in a sense since his daughter had clubfoot but he gave us hope when we were in very short supply of it) but every time she runs a lap at running club, scores a goal in soccer, takes the softball field, rides her scooter or bike around the neighborhood, or something as mundane as walking into school each day, I am thankful for Dr Fluffy Unicorn. Because without his skill or talent we would have none if it. But above all, it’s been his connection with Sporty and their bond that has brought her to the next level. He’s always made an concerted effort to connect with her, whether over baseball, movies, cartoon characters and as she’s getting older, sports, SHE has always respected him and felt comfortable and confident in him and so even when she’s had to have surgery, she’s taken comfort in knowing that he would never to do anything to hurt her. The steps we’ve taken are to give her a better life and she gets this, as much as an 8 year old can get it. Above all, he’s always been a strong believer in letting kids be kids and because of this, we’ve scheduled castings and surgeries around summer, softball season, softball tryouts, and soccer season, or the 5th birthday party that she really wanted to be a Pump It Up party. This has all added to his credibility with Sporty. And conversely, he has a level of respect for her, when he gets new patients with clubfeet, she’s his success story. A girl who was born with a tough case of bilateral clubfeet, a girl who loves to run, a girl who has had a long journey but a girl who doesn’t let anything stand in her way.
Because of Dr Fluffy Unicorn, we have an adventure and a happy story to tell.
The Beginning
We found out when I was about 21 weeks pregnant with Sporty that she would have clubfeet. I actually remember it like yesterday, even though it was over 8 1/2 years ago. I knew something was wrong when the perinatologist came in and zeroed in on her heart, then her brain, then her feet, then back to the heart, brain, feet, and more feet. I still hear his words: “Your baby has some birth defects that have us concerned.” After that, the buzzing began. In addition to her clubfeet, she also has clinodactyl (curvature of the pinkies) which combined with clubfeet can be soft markers for Down Syndrome. The rest was a whirlwind but what should have been a joyous appointment followed by baby registries and baby clothes shopping, turned into an amniocentesis and a weekend of bed rest.
Here’s a post from my old family blog of that day:
Emotional rollercoaster that is!
We had a rough weekend. Friday we went to the perinatal clinic for our routine 20 week ultrasound where they do an anatomy scan of the baby. All was going well, the baby was cooperating, moving around a lot, they looked at her genitals and she was indeed a girl, and she grew a ton. Then the ultrasound technician went to get the Doctor and he came in and started focusing on her heart and brain and didn’t say much to us. We started to get a little worried but then he said he sometimes gets in his zone and forgets to talk to his patients and it gets them worried. He asked me who my OB was and what I did, made chit chat with us. Then he dropped the bomb that no new parent, or any parent ever wants to hear….”Your baby has some birth defects that have me concerned.” We were in shock, 7 weeks ago they told us we had a perfectly normal, healthy baby and Friday our baby girl had birth defects. He then showed us what he was seeing. Our daughter has 2 clubfeet and another condition called clinodactyl, which basically means her pinkies curve in instead of being straight. The fingers aren’t considered a birth defect but since she has curved fingers and club feet he was concerned. If he had seen one but not the other he wouldn’t have been worried but since he saw both conditions he wanted to do an amniocentisis to test for Down’s Syndrome. Hubby and I were in a state of shock, two weeks ago I was my OBs star patient and now we were talking birth defects.
So we did the amnio, I hide in Hubby’s arm and cried the whole time, mostly because it hurt. The Doctor said he’s done 4,000-6,000 and this one was text book and she didn’t even know he was there. Hubby later said he watched it on the screen and he went in between her legs and took the fluid while he legs were wiggling around it. They showed us the fluid, which looks a lot like pee, and they told us it was clear which is what they like to see. Then we met with the Genetic Counselor who was super nice and explained everything they were looking for, the office there is so compassionate and the Doctor came in several times to see how we were doing. I kept asking how this could be happening to us since I was only 29 and our first trimester screening gave us a 0.1% chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome. So we went over what they saw on the ultrasound and basically the only thing that worried them were her feet and her pinkies, everything else was normal, her brain, her heart, and her limbs (which usually show signs of Down Syndrome). At 5:30 we finally left the clinic, my appointment was at 2:45 and I was sent home on basically bed rest for the weekend to reduce the risk of miscarriage that amnio’s can cause. We went home in a state of shock. The weekend was absolutely draining for us as we tried to wrestle with the fact that we could possibly be the 1 baby in 900 (the odds they gave us in our first trimester screening). I hardly slept, Hubby was a wreck, Homer (dog) was a sweet boy, I think he sensed our moods. We told our neighbors who were so supportive and both brought me a bouquet of flowers.
Then it was Monday and it was the waiting game. At 10:30 I got off of a conference call and walked Homer because I was going crazy sitting around waiting, I worked at home since I didn’t want to get the news in the office. Hubby had confiscated my cell phone because I was too afraid to hear the news myself. While I was walking Homer the call came, and the news was what we had hoped for. Based on the amnio she has a 99.96% chance of not having Down Syndrome, Trisomy 13 or Trisomy 18. And she’s definitely a girl. We’re still waiting to hear about Spina Bifida but they were less concerned about that because we have seen her move her legs in the ultrasounds and her spine looks fine in the ultrasounds. So next week we get the full results but they are confident that we have a healthy baby with club feet.
So what does that mean? Treatment on clubfeet is very successful. Before she’s born we will meet with a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and talk to him about the ultrasound and talk about a treatment plan. She will most likely be in casts her first 6 weeks of life as they gradually work her feet back into position (fortunately clubfeet is caused by tight ligaments and tendons and not deformed bones), they will have to change her casts every week in the first 6 weeks. After that she will have her casts changed every 2 weeks until they are in the proper position. Then she will have to wear braces at night. When she starts standing and walking she won’t have to wear the braces as much because her ligaments will be strong enough to stay in place. Within a few years no one will know she was born with clubfeet. Kristie Yamaguchi had club feet and several NFL players were born with it as well so her treatment looks good, especially since we hope to start it shortly after birth. My mom is happy because that means lots of dresses (which I normally wouldn’t put her in) because of the casts. There is no treatment for the fingers, but it won’t affect her motor skills. We also have an appointment on Friday at a pediatric cardiologist for a fetal echocardiogram since Hubby had a heart murmur. They are just sending us as a precautionary measure since Hubby was born with a heart murmur even though they didn’t see anything wrong with her heart.
One thing Hubby and both learned out of this whole ordeal is how incredibly much we love this little person! We also learned what a wonderful support system we have, we have the most supportive family and friends and we and our baby girl are so lucky.
So all is well that ends well and our little girl is going to be just fine!
I also remember the perinatologist telling us how she would live a normal life and she would be able to run and play with her peers but that she would never be able to truly compete. After Sporty was born, we never ever let her feet be an excuse. When she didn’t walk at a year like lots of babies do and we were concerned, the Doctors (pediatrician and orthopedic surgeon) told us they wouldn’t be concerned until 24 months because of her feet, we refused to accept it. She walked at 15 months (as did our non-clubfoot son) a week after getting tubes put in her ears which I think played a bigger role in her balance and steps than her feet actually did. And once she stood upright, she never stopped. This is where I believe that Doctors are great, my grandfather was a Doctor and I have friends who are Doctors and I have nothing but respect for Doctors. They know a lot, but they can never estimate the power of the human spirit. No one could have predicted how Sporty would take charge of her life and rule it. And to this day, even after having surgery 3 1/2 months ago, her feet aren’t an excuse, in pain at the end of softball practice today, she rounded third base as fast as she could, refusing to give up, to sit down and rest, to go at half speed like I suggested she do.
The Inspiration
Here’s the photo that was the catalyst to this blog. Keep in mind these are just a fraction of her casts that she’s had. We didn’t keep her casts from infancy (with the exception of her first surgery cast which is in a shadow box in her room) and I donated all but her first pair of brace shoes to other clubfoot families, mostly living abroad. Yet the path leads to two corrected feet and one unstoppable happy little girl. 
Made to Run
I started a blog about 6 months ago about my switch from a working mom to a stay-at-home mom. I was totally uninspired. I made 2 blog posts in the 6 months since I’ve been off. I don’t know if it’s been a combination of being home for the first time EVER with a very difficult 5 year old and an over scheduled 8 year old and just getting completely wrapped up in life with them or the fact that I’m basically breathing air through a straw while I’m 10 feet below water but I’ve always found an excuse to NOT blog. And I love to write so clearly it was the wrong material.
My 8 year old, Sporty, had surgery December 1, 2016 to correct a clubfoot. She was actually born with bilateral clubfeet but we fixed her left foot 3 years ago and conquered the right foot this past year. It was rough but through it all her spirit was for the most part, unwavering. I recently posted a picture on Facebook of about 25% of her casts and AFOs lined up in a path leading to her fully corrected clubfeet (I’ll post that when I get a little more savvy on wordpress) and her former kindergarten teacher (she’s now in 2nd grade) suggested I write a book on her and all she’s accomplished despite her lot in life (and yes, I know our lot could have been a lot worse, I’ll get to that argument eventually). While I’m flattered she thinks I’m book worthy, I’ll settle on blog posts for now. Maybe when Sporty gets a college scholarship for softball (her current goal) or soccer, I’ll go for that book deal. For now, I’ll be the cliché stay-at-home blogging mom.
As I’ve thought about her teacher’s quick statement as we passed in the halls before school one day, I’ve always felt like our family has been given clubfoot and our extraordinary daughter for some reason. Is it to teach us to see perfection in something imperfect (crooked feet)? Is it to show Doctors that they may know all the statistics but they can never predict the power of the human spirit? Is it to reach out and help other families (maybe via this blog)? I don’t know any of the answers. I know life has been hard for us, for Sporty, but we’ve made the best of it or at least tried. Her surgery in December was her 3rd, and in my opinion, one surgery for a child is one too many but it’s our normal, its our world. My 5 year old thinks all big sisters have casts and AFOs, it doesn’t occur to him that we lead a different life than most. We go to an awesome orthopedic surgeon at a world renowned medical facility. He’s been treating her since she was 10 days old. He’s shared office space with neurology and other specialties, we’ve seen it could be much worse. But I also see my friends and their kids, and I can see that our life can be much easier too, a world without casts, AFOs, surgeries, buying whatever shoe she wants and not worrying about her wide chunky feet, a side effect of clubfeet. Still through all of this wallowing and doubt, I feel like we were handed a stubborn case of clubfeet for something.
So here we go with “Made to Run.” I chose the words carefully. She wasn’t born to run, her feet were twisted upwards making, walking, let alone running impossible, but innately, she was made to run. Something inside of her is wired to run and after she was released for physical activity after this last surgery and I saw her running, I saw her face as she ran, it was wild and happy and free and I realized that ironically, this bilateral clubfoot girl was made to run. She came out 4 weeks premature, wide eyed and taking in the world, screaming at the top of her lungs at a mere 4lbs 14oz, shocking the NICU Doctors who found themselves worthless with this premature baby that acted like a full term baby. She hasn’t stopped since. In a recent conversation with her, I told her (in reference to school work) that everything didn’t have to be a race. She responded with “Mom, it’s not my fault I was made to race, I can’t help how I was born.”
No Sporty, you are right, you can’t help how you were born. So this is the story of a girl who was made to run. A girl who has defied the Doctors predictions for her life. A girl who lives life to the fullest. A story of a girl, beating clubfeet one step at a time.
The adventure begins!
Made to Run 