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shelbys Story . . . In Her Words

One day at practice we were tumbling and I did a front handspring and it felt like my hip flew out of place.  We thought it was like a pulled muscle but it wasn’t getting any better.  I started to limp and the pain was really bad.  We went to the doctor’s and they told me to take Advil.  He thought it was a pulled groin.  One of the other mothers at gymnastics told us to go to see a chiropractor.  So we went.  He cracked the lower parts of my body and it felt fine.  That didn’t help though, so we went to the doctor and asked if we could see an orthopedic.  The doctor told us to see an orthopedic pediatrician and he suggested Dr. Dennis Weiner at Akron Children’s Hospital. 

We went to see Dr. Weiner and he didn’t even have to look at the x-ray, he knew what it was right away.  It was called Leg Perthes Disease.  He wanted to do the surgery right away but I only had 2 weeks of school left so he scheduled it for June 8, 2000 .  The surgery took 6 hours and I was in the hospital for 3 days.  I had a body cast on from the hips down and a bar holding my legs apart.  I was in a lot of pain and my legs were twitching because the nerves did not want to stay still.  The nurses were very nice, they gave me a blanket and Velcro shorts to take home with me.  One of the nurses worked at the Gund Arena and I told her that I had tickets to see Britney Spears – she got me better seats than what I had. 

When we got home it was hard to get me into the house, we live on a hill with a lot of stairs so my mom and dad put me in my wheel chair and wheeled me up the hill into the side door of our house.  My mom took off the summer from her job to take care of me.  We would go to the mall and she would push me around in my wheel chair.  She would take me to the park and wheel me around the track.  My friends would come over to visit me. 

August 8, 2000 I went back to Akron Children’s Hospital to get my cast off.  It was scary; I thought they were going to cut me when they cut my cast off.  It didn’t though. They used a special vibrating saw to remove the cast so that it wouldn’t cut me.    Right after they took my cast off I had to go to physical therapy to try to get my leg to bend.  They put me in a tub of water to try to loosen my hip up.  It would not bend.  Then they worked with it, moving it back and forth, it hurt really bad.  They wanted it to bend 90 degrees but I couldn’t get it to bend that far.  I was screaming and crying and my mom was crying.  After that first physical therapy session we did my physical therapy at Massillon Community Hospital were my mom works.  She would go to work and then after work pick me up at my grandmother’s house and take me to my therapy.  I had to use a walker when I got out of my cast.  My leg was shorter than the other one so we had to take my shoe to Canton Orthotic to get a higher sole put on one of my shoes.  I had therapy 3 days a week  - it was going well! 

When I went back to school I was using crutches.  I was in the 4^th Grade.  My class was upstairs so my mom decided to take me out of school because she thought that someone would knock me down.  My mom’s friend home schooled me my 4^th and 5^th grade years.  In November I had to have another surgery.  It was to take out the plate and 6 screws that were in my hip.  I still have 1 screw in my hip; the doctor told me that it would stay in there forever. 

I go to the doctor once a year now and the doctor says that it is doing great.  The doctor told me that I would not get arthritis in my hip.  I am 12 years old now and I do gymnastics and it feels great!

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