Mum of Little Girl Born With One Leg Shorter Than the Other Shares on Her Gruelling Treatment

According to Mirror, 4-year-old Elsie Moravek, was born with Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency (PFFD) – a deficiency that has made her left leg deformed and considerably shorter than her right.

Elsie’s parents Jackie, 28, a resource analyst, and Matt, 31, a quality engineer, was told by doctors that they had three options. The first is to amputate Elsie’s leg, fit a prosthesis or lengthen her limb by 11 cm. The couple, after carefully thinking about the options, finally chose to lengthen the girl’s leg, which would be done through  a gruelling treatment reminiscent of medieval torture device ‘the rack.’

“A few local doctors suggested amputation, and we considered it because the leg lengthening process is so difficult to endure,” Jackie, from Kalamazoo, in Michigan, US, said.

He added, “We asked ourselves if we were being cruel to put our daughter through this and whether it was worth it. But we knew it was the right decision. We wanted Elsie to have the best life possible.”

Elsie’s condition had come as a complete shock for her parents.

While seeking professional help, they met with Dr Shawn Standard who is an expert in the procedure at the Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. There, they decided to lengthen Elsie’s leg.

The doctors took about 6 hours in the operation room to reconstruct her knee, ankle and hip. After a successful operation, Elsie was finally able to walk at 21 months old. She was fitted with a Prosthetic foot, which bridged the gap between her real foot and the floor.

During the operation, Elsie’s femur and tibia were surgically split apart and fitted with an external fixator device, with ten pins piercing through her skin, muscle and bone.

Three times a day, Jackie had to manually turn screws to pull apart her daughter’s femur and tibia a millimetre a day, preventing the break from healing each time. Miraculously, new bone, muscle and skin grew in its place as the leg gradually lengthened by 11 cm over 4 months.

Elsie was on constant pain medication throughout her treatment.

Jackie said,”I felt very helpless. I was very pleased with her progress but it was hard to see her in pain and crying. I would have to put my mum hat on and push through it because I knew what the end result would be. Cleaning the open wounds where the ten pins had been drilled into her bone was the worst. It was agony for her. I felt upset watching her go through it, but we had a goal in mind.”

Now 4, Elsie’s legs are equal but because her left limb still has a growth deficiency, her legs will grow out of sync again. She will require another procedure to lengthen her left leg by a further 10 centimetres once she reaches her full height.

Jackie continued: “We wanted to give Elsie the best life possible and we thought the best option was to lengthen her leg. That means she won’t need a prosthetic or to get her leg amputated so she can do everything other girls her age are capable of. Elsie was in constant pain and I missed my eldest daughter’s first day of school because I was in Baltimore. We made a lot of sacrifices for this but every single one of them was worth it.”