Hi my name is Loureen. I have a son who is seven years old and a daughter named Isabella who was born at 32 weeks at 4 lbs on July 4, 2002 with ABS. During my pregnancy I had twice the normal amount of prenatal appointments and several ultrasounds as I was considered to be high risk; my son had been born at 28 weeks for no apparent reason.
When I was 20 weeks I decided to have a video ultrasound done through a private ultrasound tech just as a had done previously with my son. I thought how nice it would be to have this done for both of my kids to see when they grew up. Little did I know the surprise I would get with my daughters video. The ultrasound tech discovered that my daughter had clubfoot on her left foot, he then forwarded these ultrasounds to my OB/GYN then to a Geneticists who did further ultrasounds on me to confirm the clubfoot. Instead of being thorough and checking my amniotic fluid I was then accused by the Geneticists of using recreational drugs since this wasn’t a hereditary condition. After she was born and I had a diagnoses I found out that amniotic bands could be seen and the low amniotic fluid could also be detected in an ultrasound. I’m very upset that nobody caught it. Then after to also find out there is an intrauterine surgery that could have been performed to untangle the bands. To now find out that this surgery could have been done thirty minutes away from my home at a hospital in San Francisco, CA.
When Isabella was born it was a very emotional shock to see that the clubfoot wasn’t an isolated condition that it was much more severe than what I was told, some of her fingers and toes were amputated, two toes were together, one foot was longer than the other, missing toe nails, and she had a few skin tags. At first it was hard for me when we would go out places everyone would say “what a beautiful baby but what’s wrong with her?”, after a while I was fed up with explaining myself to everyone that I would ignore or walk away when someone would ask. Now if someone ask why she was in a cast she would tell them “My Dr is fixing my foot”.
The day after she was born they started to cast her left foot and that lasted eight months until they performed a Tenectomy. She then continued with corrective shoes attached that is to a bar. Since then there hasn’t been much improvement with her clubfoot. In May 2004 her podiatrist started casting again and performed another Tenectomy in August. Now she is in corrective shoes connected to the bar again. I just sent an application to Shriners in Sacramento, CA Kaiser isn’t willing to do anything more for her unless it is absolutely medically necessary. I’ve researched online and I know that there is so much more that could be done for my little girl so now I’m just waiting on Shriners.
I am glad to say that she is a happy, strong, independent, energetic, and very intelligent two year old who is about to start ballet. Unless you really stare at her you would never notice that she was made a little bit more special than others.
