Who would think that you could grow your leg? Impossible! Yet there I was at four in the morning heading into the Children’s Hospital to do just that. Polio had affected half of my body at birth due to lack of effective medicine in the orphanage I came from in Moldova. Adoption saved me, and I had the medical availability to fix what could be fixed. They were going to break my leg, separate it out, drill into and through it, and weaken my already lacking right leg muscles. I had a practically nonexistent quad muscle, which controls a large amount of leg movement and ability. My left shoe size is a nine, my right is a seven. To this day, my doctor is amazed at my body's secret method to compensate and able myself to walk with nothing but a slight limp. Little did I know that the same year I was born in the Republic of Moldova, a medical breakthrough was developing just a few countries over in Poland by Doctor Gavriil Ilizarov that would transform my life.
I had a naïve idea of what the next two years would bring. First of all, what 12-year-old girl would agree to such an operation? Metal hardware, rims, circles, needles and bolts streamlined through the bottom half of my leg. My leg’s broken bone was being slowly drawn apart millimeters at a time to compensate for my two-inch leg length discrepancy. The operation’s black metal contraption looked more like another outlandish, appalling creation of Dr. Frankenstein’s than an ingeniously perfected medical procedure.
While a two-inch leg discrepancy may seem small, it is quite a bit in terms of bone. The doctors believe that my polio vaccination was not kept at the right temperature and became partially defective. My leg did not fully grow and muscles failed to develop.
In addition to the usual horrors of middle school, I had additional baggage jam-packed with obstacles. My mobility was incredibly constrained. The girls at school ignored me, their eyes hastily diverting away. They whispered about me in the bathroom stalls and gawked when they thought I wasn’t looking. As a devoted violinist since age four, it was now too difficult to play violin in a wheelchair. I had always treasured drawing and was looking forward to art classes, but I wasn’t permitted to take art class because it was in a separate building with two flights of stairs and no elevator. Liability, passiveness and legal concerns kept my activities limited in and out of school. Although I was missing out on many activities, I kept my goal in sight: to complete my leg lengthening.
There was a point in the process when the emotional stress of constantly being wheelchair-bound, always being different, always being left out, was taking its toll. My doctor, Dr. Kasser, knew my mental health was vital and offered to halt the growth. “You have an inch right now,” he calmly informed me. “You could stop the lengthening now. Many others have had to stop short of their goal because of the emotional and physical toll,” he explained, his bright blue eyes full of concern and understanding. It would have been breathtakingly easy to take the shortcut to recovery, but I couldn’t. I had come halfway, I thought, that’s half the battle … I’m getting that second inch.
Skip past a few falls outside on black ice and an infection. Slide past the wheelchair races I had in the halls of middle school, thus earning the nickname “speed racer.” Hurdle past the countless physical therapy sessions. And definitely fast forward through the long nights of exercises and stress with my parents, when all I wanted to do was hit them over the head with my metal contraption each time they told me it was time to do exercises or pin cleaning. Time inched by slowly; days lingered uneventfully. Then, braces, pins and bolts were gradually removed, and the wheelchair was discarded for crutches. After an eternity and a day I was on my own two equally long feet.
It was two long years until I was able to learn to walk again and leave my last physical therapy session on my own legs! Thankfully, I was able to participate in violin and art again, even having the opportunity to play a violin solo for Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley! I started an art business veterans fundraiser, Art Salutes (www.artsalutes.com) to help others who perhaps can't have their legs fixed as easily. Now that I've started looking into driving, it has become quite the process. I will need a medically altered car. I have been working two jobs this past year, as I took some time off before returning to full-time academics. And every day I remember how far I have come. It will probably take me all summer to get my special driving lessons and modifications complete so I can drive safely. But that's okay. The hardest part is over.
Looking back on those years, it never occurred to me how much I was learning about others, myself and this crazy thing we all take a chance on called “life.” There are some lessons that words cannot teach or instill in the mind. I had the true test of patience in this operation. Everything took time, usually more time than predicted due to medical precautions. Faith, perseverance, and tenacity grew into my being and became an undeniable part of me that is eager to take on the world one inch at a time – into the career world of Boston, to global travel for research and writing and whatever else this world has in store for me.
