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The young couple had to make the awful decision to have their four-year-old’s leg broken a total of 300 times over four months – that’s three times a day – just to save her from amputation.
Little Elsie Moravek was born with a rare disability known as proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD), which caused her left leg to be deformed and much shorter than her right leg. The two treatment options presented to the Moraveks were amputation and prosthesis, but they managed to find a third way that could potentially lengthen Elsie’s leg by just over four inches. Sadly, the gruesome procedure involved breaking her leg three times a day for four months.
“A few local doctors suggested amputation, and we considered it because the leg lengthening process is so difficult to endure,” said Jackie. “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.” It was when Jackie and Matt met Dr Shawn Standard, an expert in leg lengthening at the Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, that they finally decided to go ahead with the procedure. Elsie had her first surgery at 6 months old – a six-hour operation to reconstruct her knee, ankle and hip. She was then fitted with a prosthetic foot that bridged the gap between her real foot and the floor, after which she was able to walk for the first time.
But that was just the beginning of the ordeal. At age three she went through another surgery to surgically split apart her thigh and calf bones. Her leg was fitted with an external fixator device with ten pins piercing through her skin, muscle, and bone. And to prevent the break from healing, Jackie had to manually turn the screws on the device, pulling apart the femur and tibia bones by 0.039 inches a day.
Oddity Central.
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