Poster Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

the way he talked to me—not just to Mom and Dad—even though his explanations were beyond me. I did understand "hip" and "plate." For a long time, I imagined one of our nice china dinner plates embedded in my hip, the kind that were used only at Christmas and Easter. It gave me comfort to think of the plate there, as if the doctors had been kind enough to leave behind something from home after they cut me open and started moving things around and putting bones into their proper place.
    Dr. Elliot explained that the only way to effectively manage PFFD was through amputation. The percentage of bone shortening is progressive. For example, if the defective femur is 50 percent shorter than the other, as both legs grow, this discrepancy will persist. The body stays geometrically aligned, maintaining its given shape as if asymmetry had been the plan all along.
    There are various levels of severity with PFFD, ranked from A to D using the Aitken classification; a grade D indicates the most severe case with the most potential ambulatory problems. I had a grade B, and with it came associated fibular hemimelia (a term that includes fibular abnormalities, limb-length discrepancy, and other related issues). My knee joint had a ring meniscus instead of one that was semicircular and was therefore unstable. The only way to get the solid, weight-bearing segment required for walking in a prosthesis was, as Dr. Elliot recently explained to me, "early ablation or removal of the foot by ankle disarticulation." Essentially, as I later told kids at school, "my foot got sawed off"—and this wasn't so far from the truth. After the procedure of Syme's amputation (named for James Syme, who invented this method of amputation in 1843), I would be left with a weight-bearing stump that, with the help of an artificial leg, would have to do the job that the original "birth leg" was unable to perform.
    On May 26, 1978, a few months before my fourth birthday, I had the repeat osteotomy, and my left foot was amputated to ensure a chance for a better-fitting and more aesthetic prosthesis in the future.
    The nurses sang a song from the musical Annie as the anesthesiologist fitted the clear plastic mask over my face in the operating room and I began to count backward slowly from ten. The mask was like a toxic flower, and with my nose pushed deep into its dull, gray-colored petals, I was being forced to inhale its dangerous scent. The anesthesiologist stared down at me as the flower-venom disintegrated in my mouth. I was already too tired and too heavy to struggle. "Good job, good girl," the doctor said, and the notes of "Tomorrow" faded into silence. My breathing slowed. My muscles loosened. The anesthesiologist's big hands held the mask to my face. His nose was round and slightly red; sweat leaked out from the edge of his blue cap. I would never be able to snorkel or dive without thinking of that mask. Having plastic in my mouth or over my nose always makes me feel as if I am about to inhale a substance that will put me to sleep and when I wake up part of my body might be missing, gone forever. The nurses' blue caps blurred together, and all the voices stopped. I never got past the number seven before I was completely asleep, floating in a dreamless oblivion.
    I regained consciousness in the recovery room with my head over a plastic bowl, vomiting. Recovery is a misnomer for this room, as little recovery happens here. What happens instead is discovery: What's been taken, what's been fixed, what's in a cast, where does it hurt?
    I looked down at my body. My left leg looked like a rounded, batlike object, covered in plaster. The foot was gone. I looked around: Maybe it was nearby, maybe in the next bed. No. When I turned my head, the world spun a bit; when objects were clear again, I saw, on either side of me, beds with side rails holding sleeping kids wearing casts that were slightly different from mine. The girl next to me woke up and vomited, too. She looked