United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Where I live in Ontario, Canada, the Royal Canadian Legion (our Veterens Assoc.)has an annual Public Speaking competition for grade school students. My 9-yr old daughter has decided (with no prompting from me what-so-ever!!!!) to do her speech on her sister's BPI.

She told me that she plans on winning so that more people will hear what happened to Missy and maybe it won't happen to their new sisters or brothers. Or maybe their grandparents will hear and can let their Mommy's and Daddy's know about it.

This adorable, sweet, caring child of mine amazes me and makes me so proud.

Ginne

ps- I have had to edit out the part about the "idiot Doctor that did this to Melissa"----didn't want the Legion people to take marks away (LOL)

Ginne,

This is just so very, very touching! I can only begin to imagine how proud you must feel. Thanks for sharing with us. Hope it goes well.

Take Care,
Lisa

Ginne,

Thanks for sharing. It is always good to read a sweet and caring story.

Let us know how the competition goes.

Best to you all,

Karen

Ginne
Thanks so much for sharing.
I think it is wonderful that your daughter cares so much about her sister. I hope she wins please keep us posted.
Kath

That is so inspiring. You must be one proud mother.

One of the things we learned in the Sibshops workshop at Camp last time was that many siblings of injured children grow up to go into service professions, like medicine, social work or teaching. They seem to develop excellent empathetic skills.

Do you think maybe she would want to share her speech with us so we could print it in Outreach?

Nancy Birk
UBPN President

Ginne:
You must be very proud. Tell her to knock their socks off!

I had to laugh out loud about your "edit"...These kids are so intuitive.

claudia

Hi Ginne, I second the motion to print your daughter's speech in OUTREACH next issue. Please do it!
Carolyn J

Below is a copy of her rough draft. We still have to edit for time. The speech is supposed to be between 3-5 minutes but she talks fast, so we might have to add some more statistic (that ought to slow her down when it comes to memorizing numbers!!!)

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I’m going to tell you the story about my baby sister Melissa and her left arm. When Melissa, or Missy as we call her, was born on March 26, 2003, she kind of got stuck on the way out. Because she got her shoulder stuck and the Doctor pulled really, really hard, she ended up with an injury called Brachial Plexus palsy. Sometimes this injury is called Erb’s Palsy or Klumpke’s Palsy depending on which nerves for the arm are damaged.
In Missy’s case, the nerves that control her left arm from the upper-arm to her fingers were torn from the spinal column. This type of injury happens to 3 out of every 1000 babies. Sometimes they are ok and sometimes they need surgery. The doctor at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children said that Missy needed surgery to try and fix the damage and give her some use of her arm.
In June of 2003, when she was barely 11 weeks old, my parents took her to Sick Kids for her operation. It took over 13 hours and she stayed at the hospital for another 4 days. When the operation was all done, Dr Clarke (who was one of the eight doctors working on Missy) told my parents that she should get up to 40 percent use of her arm. The hope is that she will be able to hold something with her hand and bring it to her mouth.
It has been a year and a half since she had her surgery and she can sort of lift her arm and will turn her hand over to the correct position if you tell her to. We still have quite a bit of time to work on the hand to mouth thing, but she may need another surgery in a couple of years.
Now for the amazing part about my sister and her left arm. She is so busy and so active, that unless you were paying real close attention to her, you wouldn’t even know that her arm doesn’t work like everyone else’s. She climbs onto and over everything, which drives my Mom insane, and she gets into things that she is not supposed to because she is so darn fast! I think her favourite thing to do – or one of her favourite things to do – is to annoy her big sister (that’d be me!!) But I love my baby sister anyway

By Nicole Clare

Nicole,

What a beautiful story. I wish you the very best of luck in the contest. You are a very special sister to your little sister.

Hugs, Karen