If you followed the saga of Ellie Harris, you know her left arm is not completed. i.e. she has no hands. I didn’t know until this week, the reason.
While in the womb, Ellie got tangled with some of her mother’s cords and some places did ot develop properly. I knew she had no left hand. I didn’t know the rest until this week.
Ellie has an undeveloped hand at the end of her arm. She, on her right hand, has two fingers grown together, and she has something wrong with her leg.
Phos probably already knows more about this now than I do.
However, Mary took her to a Shriner’s hospital in Tampa. She is going back after Christmas and have the left hand removed. She will have the fingers separated so that her right hand is natural, and whatever is wrong on her leg will be corrected.
It sounds like everything will be normal except for her left arm
Tom and Mary took on a project when they chose Ellie. I am nut surprised, they age good guys and I’m proud of them.
More people than you realize are born with webbing of the fingers and have them separated. It is called syndactyly and is the most common congenital limb malformation (1 out of every 2000-300 births): http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1244420-overview. During development in the womb, the fetus fingers are webbed together and later separate – sometimes, something doesn’t go quite right at that point.
But why are they removing the undeveloped hand? My cousin’s son who was born with the same condition of a partially missing arm. It is caused by an intrauterine condition called amniotic band syndrome, which can also be a cause of syndactyly: https://amnioticbandsyndrome.com/. He also has an undeveloped hand on his shortened arm, just below the elbow. It was never removed. When the doctors X-rayed it, they said it was like the hand is inside out. Because some of the fingers nerves and muscles are there, he can use that seeming stump to help himself hold things. When he was a child, I was amazed at what he did with that inverted, undeveloped hand. He had a prosthetic, but due to his undeveloped hand, he preferred to go without the prosthetic and just use the stump. If the finger nerve ending are there in Ellie’s undeveloped hand, amputation will give her phantom limb sensations, and she may be able to use that undeveloped hand in surprising ways.
Chas, my cousin was quite well to do, high up the executive in a booming IT company, when his son was born – my cousin later gave that job up to be a missionary. Even without publicly funded healthcare, his son would have lacked for nothing in the way of medical care, but it was the doctors opinion was that the undeveloped hand should not be removed, and they were shown to be right. Ellie’s parents should get a second opinion.
SINCE CHINA BEGAN ALLOWING U.S. adoption in 1991, American families have taken in more than 88,000 Chinese children, mostly girls. Twenty-six years later, the oldest girls have come of age and are asking questions: Who are my birth parents? Why did they give me up? Many of the girls are now making the journey back to China to better understand their heritage and, in some cases, to find their biological parents. Some, like Cotter, are able to reunite with family members. Others struggle to find them amid a mass of regretful Chinese birth parents, pressured to give up their babies years ago under the country’s former one-child policy. (It now has a two-child policy, and the rate of abandonment has declined.
I heard from nineteen year old yesterday. He is doing well and enjoying the visit with his bio mom but he will be home next week. Apparently not going to stay there and find work after all.
Some in the Moebius Syndrome community are born with syndactyly &/or club feet, among other possible related limb deformities. One man in South Africa, Gavin, has hands with some of the fingers fused together, giving him essentially only two “fingers” on one hand, & the other hand has a thumb & shorter-than-average fingers (& I think they are somewhat deformed, too). Gavin has a great sense of humor, though, & refers to his hands as “limited editions”. 🙂
Three of our godsons were adopted out of South Korea. They’re all in their early 30s now.
One, in particular, has had some issues but has so far overcome the medical diagnoses for him, that it’s amazing. (His mother, then a nurse now a doctor, deliberately sought a child with medical needs. Once he arrived in America, the pediatrician told her to burn the medical records–they didn’t correspond with what he saw of this boy’s problems.) The other two are well married and living happily ever after in financial and IT jobs.
Bringing Ellie to America gives her a chance at a healthy life. That doesn’t mean she won’t have problems, but her chances of living a God-filled and happy life are greatly improved because she has parents who love her, can take care of her, will introduce her to Jesus and will give her a future.
Phos, Mary is a nurse, so I let her work out the details.
They can afford proper care for whaever Ellie needs.
They realize that she will likely want to return when she is eighteen to see what her mother wrote in the note she left with Ellie. (She has a Chinese name, but I forgot what it is.)
🙂 If you ever need yard work done, just have a church workday! I went over to the church to work on other things so was not here. They must have had 10 to 20 men and children working in my yard. And then various projects inside. Some things that they took care of, I had not even noticed. The best part was at the end they loaded up some trailers and took all of the debris to the dump. It is all gone. There was already a large 20 x 20 pile out front and then they added to it.. They asked me how I felt about fellas coming by to work inside. I told them as long as they call me first and I know someone is coming, it’s fine.
I even asked about this printer that I can’t get working. They looked at it and decided they need to buy a new one for the house, something that I was thinking of doing myself.
Amazing.
In the church I attended my last two years before college, I befriended an elderly couple, the husband of whom was the church’s pianist or organist. I mostly got to know the wife and I don’t think I ever saw them outside of church until after the husband died, and then she and I had a meal together.
She told me their love story, which included that, when he first showed interest in her, she told him she knew that she could not have children. He told her he didn’t want to have his own children anyway. (They adopted two.) The reason he didn’t want his own children? His fingers were webbed, and he was afraid of passing on that minor “deformity” to any children. Apparently he got mocked for it when he was a child. But here he was as an old man, I’d never noticed the deformity, and he used those fingers to play an instrument! It really seemed to me like he was letting a fairly minor impediment decide what he did in terms of having children, though in their situation it worked great since his wife couldn’t bear children anyway.
That was 30 years ago, and I didn’t know till just now (Roscuro mentioning it) that his issue was probably not genetic and he likely would not have passed it on to children anyway!
Cheryl, I have met, though I don’t really know her that well, a girl with such severe syndactyly that she only has three fingers (including the thumb) on one hand and just two (thumb included) on the other. She is attractive and seems quite popular. I first met her in the company of her boyfriend who attended the College and Career group my siblings and I did. Apparently the condition runs in her family. Syndactyly is one of those things that has more than one cause. With amniotic band syndrome, the syndactyly occurs because the strange bands that form (for unknown reasons) in the amniotic fluid have somehow wrapped around a limb or digits and prevent them from developing further – that is why the hand of my cousin’s son seemed inverted, as the fingers tried to develop but had no space to develop into (my cousin’s wife had two other children who were born with no problems, one before and one after). Other types of syndactyly are due to inherited genetic defects, as the missing or mutated genes are what cause the fingers to not develop properly in the womb. Nevertheless, it is rather sad the man feared passing on his webbed fingers.
Yeah, I guess that makes sense, that there would be different forms and causes of webbed fingers. Thing is, I imagine I shook this man’s hand and I never noticed, and he was in his seventies and playing for church, so it would seem he had a full, normal life in spite of a small handicap–that in his case, his handicap was probably more “cosmetic” than anything else.
Cheryl, very mild syndactyly has only some webbing at the base of the fingers, so they cannot spread as wide. The fingers would just look at bit unnaturally short and the palm a bit longer than normal. Perhaps the man, being a musician, felt keenly the fact that his hands couldn’t spread as wide. I have small hands, and it renders me physically incapable of playing most Beethoven or Liszt or Gottschalk, because they have a lot of octave reaches – I can reach an octave, but not for prolonged periods, as it strains my hands (when a muscle it at its maximum stretching point, further stretching will not help strengthen it, and only causes damage) – so I can understand his grief over his limitations. In his childhood, since he was in his seventies when you were in your early twenties, an operation to separate the fingers wouldn’t have been an option or would have presented more risks than it was worth, as the risk of infection before the era of antibiotics was quite high.
The Shriner’s Hospitals do wonderful things for children and at no cost. A Shriner will even take responsibility for getting the family to and from the hospital.
The hire the best of the best.
One of my aunt’s went through the Shriner’s Hospital as a child. She spent months there so she was tutored as well so she would not get behind in school.
My dad was a Mason and a Shriner because of that.
I think Shriner’s will charge Tom and Mary for the work on Ellie.
Tom writes software, Mary is a nurse.
I don’t know their financial circumstances, but I know they can afford it.
Sister in law was born with dislocated hips. She spent a couple of years there in a cast. The parents in law would drive down to Salt Lake every Sunday to spend the day with her and then back in time for work on Monday. That was when she was about three and four years of age. They will leave all of their money to the Shriners and so will she. I suspect that is how they get quite a bit of their money. People appreciate the huge medical help they are and it was free to the family.
Wandering Views 
If you followed the saga of Ellie Harris, you know her left arm is not completed. i.e. she has no hands. I didn’t know until this week, the reason.
While in the womb, Ellie got tangled with some of her mother’s cords and some places did ot develop properly. I knew she had no left hand. I didn’t know the rest until this week.
Ellie has an undeveloped hand at the end of her arm. She, on her right hand, has two fingers grown together, and she has something wrong with her leg.
Phos probably already knows more about this now than I do.
However, Mary took her to a Shriner’s hospital in Tampa. She is going back after Christmas and have the left hand removed. She will have the fingers separated so that her right hand is natural, and whatever is wrong on her leg will be corrected.
It sounds like everything will be normal except for her left arm
Tom and Mary took on a project when they chose Ellie. I am nut surprised, they age good guys and I’m proud of them.
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More people than you realize are born with webbing of the fingers and have them separated. It is called syndactyly and is the most common congenital limb malformation (1 out of every 2000-300 births): http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1244420-overview. During development in the womb, the fetus fingers are webbed together and later separate – sometimes, something doesn’t go quite right at that point.
But why are they removing the undeveloped hand? My cousin’s son who was born with the same condition of a partially missing arm. It is caused by an intrauterine condition called amniotic band syndrome, which can also be a cause of syndactyly: https://amnioticbandsyndrome.com/. He also has an undeveloped hand on his shortened arm, just below the elbow. It was never removed. When the doctors X-rayed it, they said it was like the hand is inside out. Because some of the fingers nerves and muscles are there, he can use that seeming stump to help himself hold things. When he was a child, I was amazed at what he did with that inverted, undeveloped hand. He had a prosthetic, but due to his undeveloped hand, he preferred to go without the prosthetic and just use the stump. If the finger nerve ending are there in Ellie’s undeveloped hand, amputation will give her phantom limb sensations, and she may be able to use that undeveloped hand in surprising ways.
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This is the boy who was born with a shortened arm and undeveloped hand: https://uwaterloo.ca/environment/people-profiles/alumnus-jacob-winter
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Thanks Phos. I don’t know if Ellie will ever realize how fortunate she is to have been adopted by a family that can have this work done.
😦 Everyone in the world wants my opinion. Almost every day I get a survey form of some sort.
With a chance to donate at the end, of course.
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Chas, my cousin was quite well to do, high up the executive in a booming IT company, when his son was born – my cousin later gave that job up to be a missionary. Even without publicly funded healthcare, his son would have lacked for nothing in the way of medical care, but it was the doctors opinion was that the undeveloped hand should not be removed, and they were shown to be right. Ellie’s parents should get a second opinion.
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On the subject of adoptions from China: https://world.wng.org/2017/09/lost_families_longing_hearts
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I heard from nineteen year old yesterday. He is doing well and enjoying the visit with his bio mom but he will be home next week. Apparently not going to stay there and find work after all.
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Some in the Moebius Syndrome community are born with syndactyly &/or club feet, among other possible related limb deformities. One man in South Africa, Gavin, has hands with some of the fingers fused together, giving him essentially only two “fingers” on one hand, & the other hand has a thumb & shorter-than-average fingers (& I think they are somewhat deformed, too). Gavin has a great sense of humor, though, & refers to his hands as “limited editions”. 🙂
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Three of our godsons were adopted out of South Korea. They’re all in their early 30s now.
One, in particular, has had some issues but has so far overcome the medical diagnoses for him, that it’s amazing. (His mother, then a nurse now a doctor, deliberately sought a child with medical needs. Once he arrived in America, the pediatrician told her to burn the medical records–they didn’t correspond with what he saw of this boy’s problems.) The other two are well married and living happily ever after in financial and IT jobs.
Bringing Ellie to America gives her a chance at a healthy life. That doesn’t mean she won’t have problems, but her chances of living a God-filled and happy life are greatly improved because she has parents who love her, can take care of her, will introduce her to Jesus and will give her a future.
Thanks be to God.
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🙂 Some of the pressures have eased off me and I’m sleeping well.
🙂 The kitten is wildly adorable.
🙂 It’s a beautiful day in northern California.
😦 Calamities abound for so many world-wide.
🙂 God’s word is true–always.
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Phos, Mary is a nurse, so I let her work out the details.
They can afford proper care for whaever Ellie needs.
They realize that she will likely want to return when she is eighteen to see what her mother wrote in the note she left with Ellie. (She has a Chinese name, but I forgot what it is.)
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🙂 If you ever need yard work done, just have a church workday! I went over to the church to work on other things so was not here. They must have had 10 to 20 men and children working in my yard. And then various projects inside. Some things that they took care of, I had not even noticed. The best part was at the end they loaded up some trailers and took all of the debris to the dump. It is all gone. There was already a large 20 x 20 pile out front and then they added to it.. They asked me how I felt about fellas coming by to work inside. I told them as long as they call me first and I know someone is coming, it’s fine.
I even asked about this printer that I can’t get working. They looked at it and decided they need to buy a new one for the house, something that I was thinking of doing myself.
Amazing.
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In the church I attended my last two years before college, I befriended an elderly couple, the husband of whom was the church’s pianist or organist. I mostly got to know the wife and I don’t think I ever saw them outside of church until after the husband died, and then she and I had a meal together.
She told me their love story, which included that, when he first showed interest in her, she told him she knew that she could not have children. He told her he didn’t want to have his own children anyway. (They adopted two.) The reason he didn’t want his own children? His fingers were webbed, and he was afraid of passing on that minor “deformity” to any children. Apparently he got mocked for it when he was a child. But here he was as an old man, I’d never noticed the deformity, and he used those fingers to play an instrument! It really seemed to me like he was letting a fairly minor impediment decide what he did in terms of having children, though in their situation it worked great since his wife couldn’t bear children anyway.
That was 30 years ago, and I didn’t know till just now (Roscuro mentioning it) that his issue was probably not genetic and he likely would not have passed it on to children anyway!
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Cheryl, I have met, though I don’t really know her that well, a girl with such severe syndactyly that she only has three fingers (including the thumb) on one hand and just two (thumb included) on the other. She is attractive and seems quite popular. I first met her in the company of her boyfriend who attended the College and Career group my siblings and I did. Apparently the condition runs in her family. Syndactyly is one of those things that has more than one cause. With amniotic band syndrome, the syndactyly occurs because the strange bands that form (for unknown reasons) in the amniotic fluid have somehow wrapped around a limb or digits and prevent them from developing further – that is why the hand of my cousin’s son seemed inverted, as the fingers tried to develop but had no space to develop into (my cousin’s wife had two other children who were born with no problems, one before and one after). Other types of syndactyly are due to inherited genetic defects, as the missing or mutated genes are what cause the fingers to not develop properly in the womb. Nevertheless, it is rather sad the man feared passing on his webbed fingers.
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Almost all my friends who adopted overseas have taken their children back to visit “the home country.”
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Yeah, I guess that makes sense, that there would be different forms and causes of webbed fingers. Thing is, I imagine I shook this man’s hand and I never noticed, and he was in his seventies and playing for church, so it would seem he had a full, normal life in spite of a small handicap–that in his case, his handicap was probably more “cosmetic” than anything else.
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Cheryl, very mild syndactyly has only some webbing at the base of the fingers, so they cannot spread as wide. The fingers would just look at bit unnaturally short and the palm a bit longer than normal. Perhaps the man, being a musician, felt keenly the fact that his hands couldn’t spread as wide. I have small hands, and it renders me physically incapable of playing most Beethoven or Liszt or Gottschalk, because they have a lot of octave reaches – I can reach an octave, but not for prolonged periods, as it strains my hands (when a muscle it at its maximum stretching point, further stretching will not help strengthen it, and only causes damage) – so I can understand his grief over his limitations. In his childhood, since he was in his seventies when you were in your early twenties, an operation to separate the fingers wouldn’t have been an option or would have presented more risks than it was worth, as the risk of infection before the era of antibiotics was quite high.
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Phos @ 5:44 explained perfectly the way it was described to me, but I didn’t remember enough to pass it on.
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The Shriner’s Hospitals do wonderful things for children and at no cost. A Shriner will even take responsibility for getting the family to and from the hospital.
The hire the best of the best.
One of my aunt’s went through the Shriner’s Hospital as a child. She spent months there so she was tutored as well so she would not get behind in school.
My dad was a Mason and a Shriner because of that.
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I think Shriner’s will charge Tom and Mary for the work on Ellie.
Tom writes software, Mary is a nurse.
I don’t know their financial circumstances, but I know they can afford it.
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They may can afford it but the Shriner’s will not charge. They raise money for this.
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I once gave them a car that they auctioned off for $2500.’
I hope that helps.
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Sister in law was born with dislocated hips. She spent a couple of years there in a cast. The parents in law would drive down to Salt Lake every Sunday to spend the day with her and then back in time for work on Monday. That was when she was about three and four years of age. They will leave all of their money to the Shriners and so will she. I suspect that is how they get quite a bit of their money. People appreciate the huge medical help they are and it was free to the family.
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