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Our daughter, Andréa Schall, was an 8-year-old adventurous, energetic, smart girl. She was a great student, girl scout, played guitar and piano, took voice lessons, participated in soccer, swimming and martial arts. We were very proud parents, expecting a great future for her.
Unfortunately, adversity occurs in life from which we cannot protect our children. In 2015, Andrea had a severe bacterial infection in her hip which impaired her mobility and caused her excruciated pain. She had a hip surgery and was able to recover. Sadly, a year later, as result of her hip infection she was diagnosed with Avascular Necrosis and Chondrolysis. Her hip joint had lost blood supply and was collapsing, and her hip cartilage was very thin as if she had developed severe arthritis. She was no longer mobile, and she was experiencing severe chronic pain.
Our family’s journey of struggles, hopelessness, emotional pain and misery began. To preserve her hip, our daughter had a varus osteotomy surgery of the right femoral head. The recovery from this major surgery was extremely painful, difficult and unfortunately, unsuccessful, leaving Andréa bed ridden with severe chronic pain, body deformity, severely tightened muscles and tendons preventing her from straightening her leg and reducing her right leg’s length. At this point, hip replacement was her only option. She had a severe sensitivity to nickel and titanium which limited her options for a hip replacement. The only surgeon willing to operate on our child, warned us that her physical ability will be limited, it will require surgical revisions every 10 to 20 years, and due to her young age, she would be at risk as an adult to become permanently disabled because there would not be enough bone for revisions.
After extensive research, we found Mr. Derek McMinn at the McMinn Center in Birmingham, UK, who is one of the best hip surgeons in the world with pediatric surgical experience. He invented a successful hip device for a hip resurfacing, a bone persevering procedure, that would enable our child to run and play sports without causing any bone loss with a high chance for no revisions. Unfortunately, she had to build her bone strength and wait her femoral head to finish growing before preforming a hip resurfacing.
Over the last two years, while she was waiting to complete the growing of her femoral head, she has had radiofrequency ablations every 3 months and medication treatment to reduce her pain. So, she could perform physical activities and participate in physical therapy to build bone strength. She has had to wear a brace to prevent her developing severe spinal curvature. She has attended mental health therapy for depression and suicidal thoughts. She has been home schooled because of limited mobility, chronic pain and inability to sit for extended periods. She cannot play, spend time with friends or do any of the things we take for granted.
After her recent medical evaluation, she is ready to have her surgery. Her hip reservicing would require a specific custom device as her hip joint is significantly damaged. We have been waiting for this device to be designed and built and we are hoping that our family journey will come to a successful end. The custom device and surgery will be very expensive. Any assistance would be very much appreciated.
Thank you for your support and donation,
Schall Family.
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