I wanted to write about my recent experience. I think you will all find out why when you read on. Sorry if some of the detail is a little, um, gross but its essential to the story.

I was born 7 weeks premature and then I was diagnosed as a little person. I am a Russell-Silver Syndrome Dwarf. That is a type of dwarfism where the left side of my body developed more “normally” than my right. Translation: I am short and lop-sided. I have dealt with this for 17 years and it never really bothered me. I have always been treated like a normal person and have done everything that a normal kid does. Never did I complain about being short or hurting. I mean sometimes people would say hurtful things, or my right leg would start to hurt during gym because it was weaker than my left leg. I always made sure not to baby myself or complain to others; I was born this way, I can’t change it, and my problems are exactly that; MY PROBLEMS. It just wouldn’t be fair to make others worry about if things were too much for me. If I needed something that was too high up, I would quietly ask someone to please reach it for me.

Then last year, I got into a car accident. Nothing really bad, but I had whiplash and had to see a chiropractor. The x-rays revealed that, not only did I have scoliosis, but I also had arthritis in my back between several vertebrae… Wow, at 16 years old, the difference in my leg length was causing arthritis… At this point my mom and I decided to see if there was some way to make my legs equal length in hopes that it would slow down the degeneration of my back and hips.

We found Dr. Kuhn in Portland. He is an orthopedic surgeon. He took me as a patient and explained that for a discrepancy like mine, I had a few options. I could shorten my long left leg, I could stretch out my short right leg, or if I had been younger, they could arrest the growth of my long leg and hope the short one catches up. At 4’10” and 17 years old, I’m positive that I’m done growing so option number three isn’t really an option for me…So I had to choose. Cut my leg open and remove a chunk of bone, or have rods put through my leg and stretch it out? It was a tough choice and it took me 2 months to decide…

I decided to have my shorter leg stretched out for reasons that are my own. I went into the hospital the day after my birthday. I wasn’t nervous until they wheeled me into the operating room and I saw all the gory looking instruments. Thankfully, I was put to sleep before I could look around too much. I woke up, crying, to a crowd of nurses and doctors desperately sticking me with IV’s to get some pain killers in me. I have tiny veins so it took them 8 tries before they got a good one. Needless to say, I was in a lot of pain. My leg had been broken in two places and had 7 pins going all the way through my bone and muscle. I was more thankful than I ever thought I could be that someone had invented Morphine.

I stayed in the Barbara Bush Children’s Wing of Maine Medical Center for 4 days. When I finally got to go home I was ecstatic. I missed being home and seeing my friends. I admit, I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of going back to school in a few weeks. My bed had been moved downstairs into the living room because I wasn’t able to climb stairs. My step-dad had even bought me a bunch of new pillows to prop up my leg.

As the weeks went on, some things got easier. My mom got used to stretching my leg four times a day and helping me clean the part of my leg where the pins went into my skin. I got used to sitting around and being bored… I kind of got used to the constant nagging pain…But its one of those things you never truly get used to. I had to go back to Portland weekly to check the progress of my leg. After two weeks we discovered that my bone wasn’t filling in…We had to reverse the process; instead of stretching my leg we had to shorten it. After that was resolved, we had to deal with some nasty infections. These infections in my pin-sites were so bad that the skin was black and oozing and causing me extra pain. After that was dealt with, my doctor took away one of my crutches! Apparently I make bone really slow and bearing weight on it will stimulate it to grow faster…I’m no doctor, so I guess he’s right.

So I am writing this now with my leg dangling over the edge of the computer chair. I’ve noticed that the thing on my leg, called a “halo”, is rather heavy. I’ve had problems with circulation and nerve damage due to the halo. I still need help with a lot of things, but I seem to get by just fine. It surprised me when I went back to school how eager people were to help me. Just walking down the hall many people would ask me if there was anything they could do to help. I was more than happy to say, “Unless you can carry me to my next class, there’s not much you can do…” And I was always happy to show my leg or answer peoples’ questions.

This experience has made me realize a lot of things about life. Like, things in life might be hard or painful as my case is, but it doesn’t mean you should give up. I also learned that if you just take things slow, step-by-step, you’ll achieve what you aim for. I mean I kind of needed a kick in the butt to give up one crutch, but now I’m okay. I also found out that friends are forever. Just because I was out of school for three months doesn’t mean that they forgot about me. And just because I have a freaky device that looks like something from SAW III on my leg, that doesn’t mean I’m a freak; they all still love me and hang out with me on Saturdays like we used to!