This personal essay was written by a father on a list for parents of kids undergoing limb lengthening. He agreed to share it anonymously for Journeymama readers. I found it tremendously moving and inspiring (and somewhat terrifying) as I prepared for my daughter's surgery.

Reflections before Surgery

My wife has been preparing for adoption for years.  She researched the various agencies, and choose one in St. Paul, Minnesota, and, then, an international adoption from China.  She clipped pictures of Asian children to help us visualize, and took us to wonderful workshops about parenting adopted children.  She even sent me to "Daddy Bootcamp" prior
to our first adoption to practice diapering, and to meet with other expectant fathers.  She gathered every possible thing I might need, and packed me off to China, twice.  She was always ready for a special needs child.  My wife realized somewhere along the way that she could do this,
that she had it in her heart to be the Mother of a child with some conspicuous difference.  It wasn't so much that she wanted or needed a child with some special need, but a recognition that she was completely comfortable with such, and as we talked, I realized I was, too.  Our first daughter has opened our lives in incredible and magical ways.  She
has taught us that parenting was a gateway to incredible joys.
   
After the adoption agency helped us make a match with our second daughter, and while we waited for her, my wife researched limb differences, and the children who had them.  She explored the various attitudes and the treatments available that could ameliorate the condition and located resources nearby.  After our daughter arrived, my wife continued her research.  We downloaded images of children with Ilizarov fixators.  She joined web based support groups, and the following summer she drove the girls all the way to Chicago to meet dozens of families with children with limb differences at a conference.

I marvel at our good fortune.  A world-renowned surgeon in limb lengthening is only a little over an hour's drive away.  The children's hospital seems incredibly well run, and equipped with every modern advantage.  Our little sweetheart!  Adopted from Nanning where she stole every heart, but where her future prospects were uncertain.  If we imagine her as the author of her circumstances, such a powerful little mite!  Reaching out from a cardboard box in a public park and across the sea to capture our hearts, reaching into the healthcare system to an
extraordinary physician.  One might anticipate that this little kid is going to be a world shaker.  

Our older daughter, now seven, has shown a turn towards real maturity in dealing with all the excitement of the upcoming surgery.  Our darling!  Adopted from Yueyang in Hunan province. She greeted me in Changsha, bundled in warm clothes, tiny, bald and toothless, a little empress, steadily surveying her world.  She is steady!  She seems every bit as composed as the first day I met her, yet what has grown up about her is a sense of joy, an ability to cultivate pure fun.  The empress is now enthroned in a garden of playful sweetness, humor and fun, and somehow, she finds lasting friendships with the most enchanting little kids.  What a joy, what a ceaseless, utterly enchanting joy it is to be their Daddy.

Week One

On April 5th, 2006 my daughter had surgery.

Diagnoses:
   1. Right fibular hemimelia.
   2. Right equinovalgus foot deformity.

Procedures Performed This Admission:
   1. Right tibial corticotomy for the purpose of limb lengthening.
   2. Right heel cord lengthening.
   3. Right tibial locking plate placement.
   4. Application of circular external fixator (tibia, foot, and femur).
   5. Right distal femoral medial hemiepiphysiodesis.
   6. Excision of congenital fibular anlage.
     
History of present illness:  The patient is a 4-year-old female with right fibular hemimelia.  She presents at this time for a lengthening procedure.

It is now the second night home from the hospital.  As my daughter drifts off, codeine and Tylenol easing her pain, I can feel her, first as a warm, tense little bundle with her back to me, her head resting on my arm, and then she dissolves into sleep.

Week Two

We've had a lot of sleepless nights.  My daughter is rebelling against her situation.

       "I knew I was going to have a frame, I didn't know it was going to hurt."

       "It's not fair that I can't walk.  It's not fair that I can't take a bath.   It's not fair that my sister doesn't have a frame."

       "I want magic to happen.  I don't want my special thing.  I don't want a little foot."

       "I want my sister to have the frame.  I want magic to happen now!"

Thursday, she went on strike and refused to take any pills.  We slipped one codeine into her Thursday about noon, and it is now . . . umm . . . Friday.   We cannot always tell if she is in pain, if it is a little or a lot.  She has also lost her appetite.  She has good spells, playing with her sister and their new "Mu Lan" dolls.  At night, playing a musical book on tape, "The Seal Maiden," puts her into a sweet silence of listening that segues into sleep.  The tale becomes more poignant with each playing.  A selkie seal pup has lost its skin and become trapped as
a human girl.  Her body is no longer recognizable by her Mother, and she is lost and alone on the shore in a strange and foreign body.  A human fisherman takes her in and raises her as his daughter.  After a long time, she learns to walk.

Each day as we turn the struts, my daughter's leg grows one millimeter. The wires and pins draw the skin tight as they pull.  At some point, the skin is going to have to tear.  She notices the pinch each time her Mommy turns the struts.  I try not to dwell on this.  I will not share this journal until after the procedure is over.  It would be hard to confront the added anxiety of parents and family, who are already secretly
appalled by this procedure.  (Who isn't?)  My daughter would make a terrific spy.  When offered the choice between pain and a little pill buried in strawberry ice cream, she picks the pain and turns the torture back on her tormentors.  They'd never get a thing out of her, and would be glad to release her!

My wife started her birthday with a good cry.  Our older daughter ran downstairs to tell me, laughing, thinking it a fun game.  Upstairs I found my wife curled up in the bed, truly crying, and the girls laughing.

I had to explain to them that their Mommy wasn't pretending.

It is Friday.  My daughter resists everything.  My wife and I take turns being fed up.  Blessedly, towards evening, she is willing to take pain meds.  She finally explained to me that she doesn't want to take the pills because her sister doesn't have to take the pills.  (She can't force a frame onto her sister, but she can refuse medicine, the one thing she has control over.)

My wife bends over her in bed, tenderly removing each piece of gauze and sponge, efficiently wiping each wound with sterile Q-tips dipped in sterile saline.  She replaces the sterile gauze
pads, the sponges that holds them in place, and the red plastic clips that secure the bandages.  My daughter sleeps through the entire process, stirring gently only for the last cleaning.

Saturday had some good moments, and some bad.  We silently celebrate the tenth day of treatment.

Each day is a universe.  Our daughter was morose Easter morning because she was sure the Easter Bunny wouldn't know that she was in a stroller, and he would hide the eggs too low to the ground.  (She has never believed in the Easter Bunny before, but somehow that morning the idea was important to her.)  She perked up immediately when she learned that the Easter Bunny did know about her stroller, and had hidden eggs at eye level!  Not only that, but she had a rich, chocolate egg already planted in her basket.  Breakfast was Easter Bunny pancakes, complete with ears and tail.  Blueberries and raspberries formed eyes, nose and buttons.
These were really great pancakes!  We smothered them in maple syrup that my wife had tapped from our neighbor's black sugar maple trees and our own box elder tree.  That syrup has an intense, chocolate aroma about it we cannot understand, but love!  Later that day, my daughter became really blue again.  We tried to coax words from her, so that we could
understand her misery.

       "I wish that I had liked my little foot.  Now it's too late!  I wish that I had liked my little foot when I had the chance."

This one caught us both by surprise.  She seems to be saying that she felt remorse for not loving her body before the surgery, and now, she feels, her little foot is gone and she has a big foot.  At her mother's suggestion, she dictates a letter to her little foot:

      "Dear little foot.  I miss you."

Week Three

       My daughter gets her first shower in over two weeks.  We set her on the shower chair, and use the hand-held shower head to rinse her from head to foot.  The water soaks the cotton pads and sponges, and they slip easily away from the stainless steel metal wires and posts that emerge from her
leg and foot.  We tenderly soap her hair, and wash the grime from her feet.  Her gaze falls on the steel rods piercing her thigh.  Suddenly her tiny shoulders are heaving with sobs.  "They put sticks in me!" she cries.  "They put sticks in me." Despite two and a half weeks in the frame, this is the first moment when she fully realizes what this frame represents.  It is a terrible moment.

Last night, my daughter wanted me to do the strut turning (something my wife has usually done).  Earlier when I had tried it, it had not gone well.  I was afraid to hurt her and in my nervousness, I turned the screw too rapidly.  The pain brought a grimace, a flood of tears and a rebuke. Last night, she asked for Daddy, saying,  "Daddy learned his lesson, I want Daddy to do it."  As she held her mother's hands for comfort, I approached the blue strut.  I spoke to it.  "I love you blue strut!  I'm going to turn you so carefully."  Somehow, talking my way into it (rather than hurrying my way through it) helped me to relax. "Count to five, sweetheart."  As she counted, I turned.  I slowly turned the knurled ring and watched the bead rise one mark over the graduated ruler. When we were
done, miraculously, she said it had not hurt.  The rest of the night did not go so well.  It was pin-care night, and it took my wife three hours to complete.  She waited for our daughter to drift off, and worked until she awoke.  Then, wait for sleep, and set to it again.  A long and restless night.

My daughter's recovery is marked by periods of joy and misery. I take her to a friend's farm to see two baby lambs.  Together we sit on blankets spread on the farmyard ground.  Just the two of us.  We toss breadcrumbs, and cracked corn to the roosters, hens, and guinea fowl. The lambs are not yet on their feet.  The day is warm and a sweet breeze softens the mood.  It is a sweet moment grasped from a swarm of nasty
ones.  That night, and the next morning are really rough.  She moans and whimpers, in pain.  She shows every sign of needing to use the bathroom, but refuses to let us touch her.  She wets the bed, and cries, full of remorse, full of guilt.  "I was bad!  I didn't take Mommy's advice."  She tosses and turns all night long.  I lie by her side, her head perched in my armpit.  Every twenty minutes she sits up, and throws her head onto my stomach to try sleeping in that posture.  Then, she crashes back to snuggle into my arm.  She moans in pain, refusing medicine.  Wednesday morning, I've had enough.  At 5:00 a.m. I selfishly steal away to shower and escape to the coffee shop.  Later that morning, my wife calls.  Our daughter is walking.

Our daughter has transformed her existence.  Her physical therapy was scheduled with the goal of having her walk in six weeks.  She is walking after two.  She travels about at the weekly clinic visit as the resident watches in disbelief.  The X-rays show that the limb has grown one centimeter, and the gap between the broken ends show flecks of regenerating bone.  The surgeon says it is perfect, that it couldn't be
going better.

Being able to walk has made our daughter proud, and somehow, after our last catastrophic night, she has chosen to take her medicine again.  The strike is over.  I'm reminded of when I first adopted her.  She didn't stand or walk for four days after we adopted her.  I was convinced that she could not stand.  On the fourth day, our new daughter stood up, and
began exploring our hotel room with energy and curiosity.  Here, less than three weeks after surgery, she is up and walking.  It coincides with her sister letting go of training wheels!  We celebrate being halfway through.

Afterword

Months later, we asked our daughter if she had advice for a child about to undergo a first lengthening.  She reflected briefly, and said, "It doesn't hurt a lot.  Everyone takes good care of you.  It hurts a little while after the struts are turned.  I walked with my fixator.  Maybe you can walk with your fixator when you have it on.  It was easy to be brave."