PROSTHETICS
making children
whole again
Pediatric prosthetics elicit questions
and concern first, rewards for a lifetime
WRITTEN BY MICHAEL LAMENDOLA
I
magine the unimaginable. Your
8-year-old son is struck by a
vehicle riding his bike around
the neighborhood. He’ll survive,
but his leg is too battered to save – it
will need to be amputated. How will
his life ahead be made whole? He’ll
be bullied. He won’t be able to play
sports. Will he need a walker, crutches, a cane?
Thousands of parents every year
ask the same questions, whether their
children through birth, or some unfortunate accident or
illness, has lost a limb, partially or
wholly. The unknown of a new artificial limb can be daunting for both parent and child.
“Children are usually the ones that
are fine with it; it’s usually the parents
that are already in a panic from the
beginning,” Brooke Artesi, founder of
Sunshine Prosthetics and Orthotics in
Wayne, says. “Children seem to adapt
while
the parents are the ones with the
questions and concerns.”
Artesi says that while pediatric
prosthetics are rare and account for
less than 10 percent of her patient
base, it’s one of the most important
population sectors to serve due to the
32 2017 EDITION | SPECIAL PARENT
confluence of factors that trauma, congenital deformities, partial limb loss or
full limb loss can have on youth and
their families.
BREAKING THE STIGMA
Artesi has intimate knowledge of
the rigors of limb loss. At 15 years
old, living in Rockaway, she departed
the Dover train station for a trip
with friends to Morristown. On the
way back, a mishap on the platform
dragged her beneath the train. It
severed her right leg below the knee.
After two weeks in the hospital and
additional recouping time at home,
she took the major step of any amputees’ recovery. She was fitted with a
prosthetic.
“It was difficult being in high school,
but I adapted,” Artesi says. “Basically,
at that point, I just went through the
motions. I told myself it happened for
a reason; I always believed that.”
Artesi says in many of her cases, it’s
the parent – more than the patient –
that is concerned, apprehensive and
sometimes lost in a sea of confusion
about what their child will go through
mentally, as well as physically, when
equipped with an artificial limb.
To quell this, Artesi says she does
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