Dwarf: A Memoir by Tiffanie Didonato, Rennie Dyball Read Free Book Online Page A

some you don’t see. But it’s there and crying doesn’t
     make it go away.”
    That made me wonder what my mom suffered from. What was her pain? I wanted to handle
     my pain the same way she did— with ease, as though it almost didn’t exist at all.
    As we walked down the long corridor toward Dr. Shapiro’s office, the lights above
     our heads cast a yellowish glow. Strange artwork dotted the walls throughout the hallways
     and waiting rooms. One painting in my doctor’s office always scared me. It was mostly
     an abstract, blotchy mess, but in the middle, there was a boy swimming in the ocean.
     He was raising his arm up out of the waves, but it was a frighteningly odd shape—
     like it had been badly broken in the surf. No one else seemed to be scared by it.
     But seeing it meant I was closer to yet another surgery, so it made my heart thump
     harder. Surgery meant that anesthesia, tubes, wires, big beeping machines, needles,
     and rubbing alcohol wereon their way. I’d squeeze my animal tighter when I saw that painting, burying my face
     in its soft little head.
    From keeping my legs straight to correcting my clubbed feet to closing a small cleft
     in the soft palate of my mouth, I’d had literally dozens of surgeries since I was
     ten months old, and I’d battled arthritis for as long as I could remember. That’s
     the nature of the beast that is diastrophic dysplasia. But from what I gathered from
     the adult conversations, this next surgery would be a more complicated series of procedures
     aimed to make me more independent. And it would be nothing like what I’d been through
     before.
    The surgery coming up was more than the typical osteotomy to correct the irregular
     joints of my legs— a procedure I was used to and didn’t even really mind. I actually
     enjoyed the hard casts woven around my legs when I woke up. I could draw on them as
     much as I wanted. Mom made sure I never ran out of markers, stencils, and stickers
     for decorating the white plaster.
    Months earlier, my mother had watched a series on the news about a radical new procedure
     called bone lengthening. It was used to correct uneven limbs, and one doctor was performing
     the surgery as a way to lengthen the limbs of children with dwarfism.
    The procedure promised the potential for great results, but it was— it is— a grueling,
     painful process. In order to lengthen a bone, surgeons first cut the bone in half.
     Then they drill a thick stainless steel pin into each side of the broken bone and
     attach an external fixator. A week after surgery, the patient begins turning the pins
     four times a day (one-quarter millimeter each time) to achieve one millimeter in length
     between the broken bones daily. The hope is that, as the bone is stretched apart,
     the body will fill in the gap with new bone, thus adding length. When the patient
     wakes up from the surgery, the pins protrude from the limb, which is encased in a
     metal halo to keep it stable. The sight ofa patient undergoing bone lengthening is a hard one to bear, even for a mother as
     tough as mine.
    Curious and inspired by the procedure and passionate about helping me live as normal
     a life as possible, Mom called Dr. Fred E. Shapiro. He was a little man who wore rimless
     oval glasses, a navy blue blazer, and a tie. It was a big deal to my mom that he taught
     at Harvard Medical School, and an even bigger deal that she trusted him. He was sweet,
     soft-spoken, and brilliant. Occasionally, he even made a joke. He had been my orthopedic
     surgeon since I was a baby, and I grew to love him as an important adult in my life.
    But in this conversation between my mom and Dr. Shapiro, there was almost nothing
     I could relate to— nor could I understand much of what they said. No one smiled. Everything
     was serious as they studied X-rays of my legs. Dr. Shapiro moved his pen vertically
     and then horizontally against the images of my bones. He was explaining something
     I