I was born to run so please cut off my leg
Nine-year-old Ruby wants to amputate her damaged limb ..so she can play football and dance just like her friends
BRAVE Ruby Hamilton is determined to have her leg amputated so she can play football, dance and run.
The nine-year-old suffers from a rare condition which has shortened her right leg. Now she and her parents want it replaced with a prosthetic limb after Ruby told her mum she was “born to run”.
A BRAVE nine-year-old girl wants to have her leg amputated because she was “born to run”.
Ruby Hamilton has the support of her parents in her desperate quest.
She suffers from a rare and crippling condition called proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD), which affects just one in 40,000 children.
It causes a deformity of the hip and the leg being shortened. She was also born with talipes – a condition where the front half of the foot turns inwards and downwards.
Ruby and her parents believe that the drastic measure gives hope of changing her life for the better.
After seeing paralympian Jonnie Peacock on Strictly Come Dancing, Ruby was so inspired by what he could do with a prosthetic leg that she asked her mum and dad to investigate the possibility of her having an amputation.
Ruby’s consultant had already discussed the option with her parents Robert, 40, and Maddy, 36, but they wanted to wait until she was old enough to decide for herself.
Ruby loves swimming and said her favourite Disney princess is Ariel – another girl who found moving in water easier than walking on land.
She would love to do gymnastics, dance and run. But she said: “I am not able to. It is so unfair.”
Talking about Jonnie, she said: “He was amazing. I didn’t know at first that he only had one leg.
“I will be able to do anything after my operation. I just want to be like everyone else. I will be able to join in with everyone else and I want to be first in a race. I want to win.
“Having a new leg will give me a real chance of winning a race.
“I want every kind of leg. I want a running blade, one I can fit my shoes on and a swimming leg.”
Ruby feels “kind of brave” to choose an amputation but insists a new leg will stop her falling over as much.
She said: “I want to be able to play football and score a goal. I try to join in at school but I fall over. I fall over about 559 times a day. I get a lot of cuts and bruises.” When Ruby was born, her parents were told that with a bit of work, the tot’s foot would turn round but they were not convinced. Maddy, from Drongan, Ayrshire, said: “Her leg just looked a bit different. I took her to the doctor’s and they checked her and said there was nothing wrong. “Fortunately, a health visitor got her a referral at six weeks old. “They realised the ball and socket of her hip was displaced and said she would need a couple of operations because she had a congenital hip displacement as well as talipes.”
Ruby had her operations and was in hip casts until she was two.
When the casts finally came off she learned to walk but the family noticed there was a reluctance to put weight on her leg. When crawling, she wouldn’t put weight on her knee. But the hospital insisted there was nothing wrong.
Maddy said: “I wanted a second opinion and was referred to a surgeon in Glasgow.
“He sent her for X-rays and pretty much knew right away what it was. He told us she had PFFD. Once we started to look into it, we realised how bad things would get.
“The main thing with Ruby was always her knee. They talked about lengthening her leg which would require a cage being placed on her leg but as time went on her knee became more of an issue with the pain increasing.
“They tried to make adjustments to her shoes but finally they said a wheelchair would be good for her.
“She was just turning four. She took to it straight away.
“We have always wanted Ruby to determine what she could and couldn’t do herself. Sometimes she would push herself so hard she would have days of pain.”
The more Ruby grew, the more noticeable the difference was in her leg length with one now 2in shorter than the other.
Maddy said: “She wants to be a gymnast and she keeps saying to me, ‘I was born to run mum’. She’s amazing.
“Sports day at school is a big thing. She gets tired but she is determined to do well. Her dream is to win a race.”
Robert said: “You see all the kids running and then see Ruby limping behind them. It is heartbreaking. I
don’t know what goes through her wee head.
“We know this is the best thing for her but at least 20 times a day we ask, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’”
Last year, experts in cruciate problems came from London and Edinburgh to see her. But Ruby has no cruciate ligament so there is nothing to reconstruct.
Maddy said: “We knew we were looking at amputation but it was a decision only Ruby could make.”
She added: “Ruby falls dozens of times every day and was starting to get really unhappy.
“We knew we had to start using words like amputation and prosthetics. We had to start telling Ruby what those words meant and that this would mean having her leg off. We showed her what the stump of a leg was like and she said, ‘That’s fine’.”
Later this month, Ruby will go to Sheffield to meet an expert for his opinion on the operation.
If all goes well, she will have surgery in Glasgow as soon as possible.
Maddy said: “All she has asked about the operation is if it will hurt.
“We’ve been honest and said it would at first but that if it wasn’t the best thing for her, we wouldn’t let her do it.”
Maddy added: “When we found out she had genetic hip displacement, we were devastated.”
But Robert said: “When we went to Yorkhill, we saw some really sick kids and it helped changed our attitudes to be more positive.”
Maddy added: “When you tell people she is having her leg amputated, they look at you with horror.
“But Ruby must be able to have a much better quality of life and do everything she can’t at the moment.”