Usha

This has been a wonderful day which fulfilled a 10 month project. Usha is a very sweet, soft spoken, 9 year old girl. She has feet that are completely flat. Painfully flat. She has ankle and knee pain now and will have hip pain in a few years. Daily she comes to me rests her head on my shoulder and says "Auntie, feet hurt. Auntie, knees pain."

Last summer we had an orthopaedic intern here who took impressions of her feet and said he would send special made shoes to Rising Star for Usha. When I arrived in October she would regularly ask if the shoes had come. They never did show. 
I asked Dr. Susan if she thought a surgeon here in India could do surgery to help. She had Usha seen by two different orthopaedic surgeons at different facilities who said she needed exercises. When asked more they said yes, she needs surgery and they really didn't know the procedure but if we insisted they would do their best. There were x-rays taken at the first appointment.

When I went to Utah over Christmas I took the x-rays to Dr. Tom Rogers in American Fork for his opinion. Dr. Rogers is a very fine podiatrist. He took one look at the x-rays, at the pictures I brought of her feet and said the feet need surgery to re-construct the arch. Exercises won't do any good. He offered to make orthotics (a temporary fix), He also offered to do the surgery at no cost and would ask IHC to donate the facility charges. I was so excited to tell Usha.

In January I made impressions of her feet using casting plaster (for broken bones), packed then in bubble wrap and kept them until new volunteers came to Rising Star. Heidi and Holly Hyte took the impressions to Utah the middle of February and delivered them to Dr. Rogers.

We have a wonderful friend who lives in Lehi, Nikki Shirliff.  She is Dani's mother.  She picked the orthotics up from the doctor's office, used them to buy quality running shoes in the right size and delivered them to Stacy. Stacy is an MBA student at the 'Ú' . Stacy arrived at Rising Star today with shoes and orthotics. I can't tell you how excited I was to take them to Usha.

When I got to Usha's hostel she came down and saw the shoes in my hand. She knew what they were. She has asked about them many, many times and I always said they were being made just for her. Her eyes were glistening. I explained she had to wear them only a few hours the first day because her calf muscles will get sore. After an hour of wearing them she came to me with a huge smile and said, "Auntie, no pain." This has been a beautiful day.