Our hospital here in Kijabe specializes in children’s orthopedic surgery. But sometimes the conditions that come to us force our doctors to go beyond the orthopedic and intervene in other ways. When Emmy came to us, she was the third of her siblings who we were to treat. Her previous two siblings had been treated for the same condition. Our doctors realized that they needed to move from their orthopedic role and advise her parents on family planning, which is now the only way to prevent the condition from occurring again.

Emmy was born with an inherited condition known as pterygium, a web of tissue connecting the knee to the heel. Though the condition is rare, in her family, it seems to be anything but. Emmy is the 8th and last-born, and out of her 7 siblings, the condition has now occurred to the fifth-born, seventh-born, and now to her. Emmy’s paternal uncle also had the condition and so did her cousin. It seems like the commonality of the occurrence is the reason her parents didn’t think it was a big deal. But when I talked to our doctors, I realized that the treatment for the condition is almost life threatening. “Full surgical correction of the condition is almost impossible, and the surgery itself can be life threatening due to the sciatic nerve and its terminal branches,” one of our doctors explained to me. I guess from such an explanation, you can only term the surgeries on her two previous siblings as “miraculous”.

I thank God that the knee releases for the other two Chelangats have been a success. But the knowledge of what the surgery entails and the possible complications makes me want to intensify my prayers for little, oblivious Emmy. Her surgery is scheduled for April, because patients undergoing this surgery have to be at least one and a half years old. So as the countdown to her admission date begins, I can only hope that God will bless our doctors with the skills to go “3 for 3” for successful surgeries on Chelangat family children.