Fibriodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva

Her parents then found out her chance of survival was 30% and as shocked and discourage her parents were they then found out that she could have been paralyzed.

If I moved my hand I could see the three long bones that stretched out from the wrist to the first joints of my fingers. Or perhaps those weren’t bones but tendons? I poked one, it was resilient, so probably it was a tendon. Underneath, though, were bones. At least I hoped so. I poked deeper, to feel the bones. They were hard to find. Knucklebones were easy, but I wanted to find the hand bones, the long ones going from my wrist to my fingers. I started getting worried. Where were my bones? I put my hand in my mouth and bit it, to see if I crunched

“Thirty-five year old Donna Duckworth is learning how to care for her newborn of five weeks, when she bends over the baby’s crib and feels something give in her back. The next day and the following week, the pain becomes unbearable in her back. She is breast-feeding and does not want to take any medication so she lives with the intense and continuing pain. Within a few weeks, she can no longer stand it so she goes to see her physician who orders blood work, does a complete physical and as a result, sends her to see an orthopedist who x-rays and does a bone density study. The diagnosis comes back as osteoporosis and it is found she has fractured three of her lumbar and four of her cervical vertebra.”

Dorrance Darling an 18 year old college football player, who was injured during a play and was rushed to a small accredited Emergency room, where a general practitioner, Dr Alexander, treated his wounds (Pozgar,2013). Dr. Alexander had not treated a major leg fracture in three years (Pozgar, 2013). An x-ray was performed that showed a tib/fib fracture, followed by Dr. Alexander reducing the fracture and applying a plaster cast from below the groin to the toes (Pozgar, 2013). Shortly after the reduction, the patient complained of pain, the cast was split and staff continued to visit patient (Pozgar, 2013). After two weeks, patient’s care was transferred to an orthopedic physician at a larger hospital, where they discovered considerable amounts of dead tissue requiring eventual leg amputation (Pozgar, 2013).

Joni Eareckson Tada once said, “Sometimes God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves” (Goodreads). Since she was born on October 15th, 1949, Joni had always been an athletic, horse-loving young lady (“Sweet Surrender” 39). That changed one hot summer day in 1967 when seventeen-year-old Joni went to the Chesapeake Bay with her sister and her boyfriend. While swimming, she dove into the water not knowing that it was shallow. As a result of the shallow water, Joni hit her head on a rock and broke her neck. Luckily, her sister found her and got her safely to a hospital. Due to the break in her neck, Joni has had to deal with the life-threatening condition of quadriplegia, or paralysis from the shoulders down without the use of her

What: With motion in only one finger, and paralyzed from the neck down, needing an iron lung after contracting polio at the age of fourteen.

Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva also known as FOP is a one of the rarest, most disabling genetic bone conditions known to medicine. FOP causes muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissues to turn in to bone. Movement becomes limited in the affected areas of the body. People with FOP typically have malformed toes at birth, meaning the big toe is typically shorter than normal and abnormally turned outward in a position called a valgus deviation. Symptoms of FOP start to show up in early childhood. Most people with FOP develop painful tumor-like swellings also known as fibrous nodules. The fibrous nodules are visible on the neck, shoulders, and back.

I was thirteen, and I had just come home from a school softball game. My friend Dalton had invited my sister and I to come and swim at the neighborhood pond. My sister stayed home, but I got permission to go. After a while of swimming, Dalton looks at me claims that he’ll jump out of a tree near the bank if I jump out. Of course, I accepted my friend’s little dare and climbed into the tree, focusing on the seven-foot-deep drop-off off of the bank. Regrettably, I didn’t jump far enough. My right leg landed in the drop-off, but my left leg hit the clay, which caused all of my weight to shift to my left foot. I felt an immense pain in my ankle and started screaming while crawling over to the bank as Dalton ran to get my mom. After I finally made it to the emergency room, I found that I had broken my fibula at an upward slant, which caused the upper part of the bone to slam down into my ankle.I had completely blown out every ligament and tendon on the left side of my ankle. I had to have a plate and four screws implanted into my fibula along with the surgical repair of all of my ligaments and tendons. The entire ordeal left me extremely interested in the human body, and this interest was heightened when I had to get my appendix removed a few months later and again when I took Anatomy and

Jeannie Peeper was born in 1958 with usual symptoms like “big crooked short toes”. 2 months later she had a bulbous swelling on the back of her head. And as the years passed her mother noticed Peeper couldn’t open her mouth as wide as her brother’s, so she took her to the doctor; who diagnosed her with FOP (Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva), a disorder in which a human can literally turn into bones, when she was just four years old. For instance this meant she was eventually going to grow a second skeleton. And since there wasn’t research about this rare disease, doctors told Peeper’s parents that they couldn’t do anything and for them to prepare for an early death. Sadly Peeper parents didn’t tell her until she was 8. “I remember vividly,

Seeing the dried up yellowed skeletons of the dead can entail many a story, from the skull of Phineas Gage with its life changing hole in it to seeing the battle hardened brittle bones of warriors of past worlds, but it is a depressing sight the see the pain in the physically deformed skeletons of those who only had the help of herbs and what would now be deemed the monstrous act of bloodletting, and other ill performed helps of our ancestors. This is exactly where my imagination ran as I gazed at the terrifying images of scoliosis. It was quite bizarre and frightening to think that I had this disease that could make what would make a twenty something year old mother of the past look like a hundred year old cripple. Not

The injuries he suffered were overwhelming, and so sudden that at first, he didn't know anything was wrong. Only when he tried to put weight on his leg did he realize the extent of the damage. He jokes about it today. "I found that I didn't have a leg to stand on," he chuckles. Most of the flesh on his leg was ripped away, leaving his foot attached only by the tendons in the back of his calf. Bones were exposed and the bleeding was profuse. He also suffered head and internal injuries.

Injury, pain, and defeat plague every human that chooses to grow out of their comfort zone and for as long as they shall live. This universal truth is unavoidable, so learning to pick oneself up again is a valuable skill that we all must develop. In the video titled Johnny’s Recovery - NO KNIFE by Ido Portal, a student named Johnny tears his left pectoral muscle from its insertion point, the humerus. Rather than seeking a doctor for surgery, Johnny demonstrated incredible willpower and began his own healing process after resting for only a day. Ido’s process disregards much of what western medicine has taught us to believe, especially when healing an injury such as this one. He, at the same time, adopts a style unique in its simplicity that could make the treatment for some

When I heard about Miguel, a close family friend was in an accident, the first thing I did was prayed for his survival. Thankfully, he did survive, however, both his legs did not. He was in a motorcycle accident. He was hit by a drunk driver driving a SUV, and flew off his bike onto oncoming traffic. A semi trailer was unable to come to a complete stop before making contact with Miguel. When the trailer finally managed to stop, Miguel was stuck under the back wheels. After being rushed to the hospital, it was decided it was best to amputate both his legs. Reconstruction was not an option. Both his legs were inoperable (L. Rodriguez, personal communication, July 4, 2014). After the surgery, once Miguel had finally awakened, he wasn’t immediately informed about his situation. According to Miguel, he remembers feeling sharp pains and cramping on both his legs. He struggled finding a comfortable position to rest his legs in order to minimize the pain (M. Rodriguez, personal communication, September 16, 2014).

Ryan Long was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley Los Angeles. His childhood was marked by significant challenges that he had to over come. Ryan was born with a congenital deformity known as club foot. Ryan’s father left when he was very young, leaving his mother to raise Ryan on her own. Ryan spent the first two years of his life in surgeries and was immobilize by casts and bars bolted to the sides of his legs. Ryan and his mother, together, faced these challenges head on.

Take a second, and imagine your life as a teenager, fresh out of college with, aspiring to get a degree in whatever your heart desires. You’ve got lots of ambition and potential. The world is at your fingertips; you can do anything you set your mind to. But one day, tragedy strikes and the unthinkable happens: you lose a limb. Why is not important, but what the future entails is. Let’s say this limb is your right arm, the one you have used all your life to write, eat, type and play the guitar. Now let’s change the scenario a little bit. Instead you’ve lost your legs in a horrific car accident where both were crushed under the weight of the dashboard as your car collided with the 4x4 in front of you. You wake up the next day in the hospital groggy, barely remembering what happened. Shock is the only thing running through your mind the moment you look down to see your legs missing. Your brain thinks they’re still there because yesterday you were just getting out of bed for your morning jog. All that remains are the stubs where your legs used to be and the unbearable thought of being confined to a motorized chair for the rest of your life.