I was almost four years old when I had my first appointment at the Shriners Hospital. I went through an intake process, during which photos were taken of my feet, I was weighed and measured, x-rays were taken, and my parents and I visited with a couple of doctors, eventually even the chief of staff. He became my primary orthopaedic doctor and surgeon.
I had such terrible problems with my feet that my doctor was afraid I wouldn’t be able to walk for long. Because of overcorrection a few years before, my bones were terribly misaligned, my heelcords were very short, and my ankles were sliding inward off of my feet.
I was four years old when I had the first of my surgeries. My doctor cut through and realigned many of the bones in both of my feet, and put pins in alongside them to keep them in place while they healed. After a number of weeks, those pins were removed, and I had surgery to lengthen my heelcords.
I forget the order of all of the surgeries, but among the surgeries that followed, I had pegs put in the outsides of my feet to try to keep my ankles from sliding off the other side, staples were put in the inside of each ankle to keep my growth plates from forcing my feet too far over – and those were removed after some time, and there were several more that I was too young to understand. I was almost never without inserts or braces of some sort, having to have new ones made after every surgery because my feet had changed in shape or I was needing correction of a different kind.
The staff and I became very familiar with one another, and the head of the orthotics department (who had started there less than a year before I began my treatment) was getting ready to retire by the time I was released because of my age (because the Shriners Hospital is a children’s hospital).
I made trips, sometimes two or more a year, back and forth to the hospital with my mom. Every time, I would see other children, some of whom whose problems appeared worse than mine. There were children who suffered from brittle bone disease, cerebral palsy and other diseases, who were in need of orthopaedic help, as well. There were many children whose limbs were being lengthened and were in cylidrical apparatuses with what looked like spokes going into their bones, which were stretched every so often by the doctors turning the screws. That was apparently, as you could imagine, a very painful and lengthy process. One little boy’s feet were turned completely backwards, and he had surgery to turn them around so he could walk.
There were children there whose families had come from foreign countries for care. One girl I befriended had come from Turkey, and neither she nor her mother spoke any English.
I was a patient of the Shriners’ for more than 17 years by the time they released me because of my age. Most children’s care was referred when they reached 18 years of age, but because I had been followed for so long and my care was ongoing, they followed me until just before my 21st birthday. At that point, I was referred to a local doctor whose care has been phenomenal.
