How an inventor helped my daughter to dance
Pollyanna lost her leg but still longed to do ballet – so Christopher Hope turned to Twitter for help
Just over a year ago, our 13-year-old daughter Pollyanna clip-clopped into the kitchen with a ballet shoe on one foot and a pink plastic cup taped to bottom of her right leg. “Look – I’m doing pointe!” she said. It was a vivid demonstration of her determination to dance, and a reminder of how, for her, this simple task has been a constant challenge.
Pollyanna was just two when she lost her leg below the right knee; the result of a bus crash in Mortlake, south-west London, which killed her grandmother, Elizabeth, and seriously injured her mother, Sarah.
It happened just 200 yards from our home. I was at work at The Telegraph, in late April 2007, when one of our neighbours, who heard the sound of the collision from his kitchen, rang to tell me what had happened.
My wife had been pushing Pollyanna’s buggy, with Elizabeth. As they were approaching the bus station, a driver mounted the pavement at speed, without warning.
Elizabeth was killed instantly. Sarah was trapped against a wall by the bus, while Pollyanna was thrown through the air, landing on a barrier, which severed her right leg. That day, she had the lower limb amputated.
What followed was months – years, really – of gruelling rehabilitation for us all. It was a while before Sarah could walk again, and the psychological damage remained for much longer. Pollyanna has had more than a dozen operations.
Her first prosthetic was fitted months after the accident and, remarkably, she has grown up like any other girl with the same interests. One of those was ballet, which she
‘Pollyanna steps forward on tiptoe and twirls on one foot. Sarah and I hug’
took up at the age of four. Since then, she has tried desperately to fulfil her dream of dancing – despite the best efforts of others to stop her.
Aged seven, she took her first ballet exam and, to our disbelief, was marked down because she could not flex her right ankle. It turned out that the examiner was just following guidance from the examining board. Our attempts to get the ballet world – backed by shocked government ministers – to allow for disabilities came to nothing.
In the meantime, Pollyanna took up horse riding, winning her dressage class at the Riding for the Disabled national championships – all the while juggling hospital appointments and surgery. Still, she longed to do ballet. So we started to pay for private lessons, while Pollyanna developed her own routines at home, perfecting the art of dancing on one leg. Sarah and I were thrilled at her grace and poise.
But when she wandered in with that cup attached to her running blade, my frustration boiled over. I took her photo and posted it on Twitter. “Can anyone help?” I asked. “Our daughter wants to do pointe, but only has one leg. Can you develop a ballet prosthetic?”
I didn’t expect it to come to anything, not least because social media can often seem so relentlessly negative, but I was amazed by the response. Over the following months my tweet was seen more than a million times, and hundreds replied. A subsequent video of Pollyanna dancing on her blade was viewed more than 135,000 times.
People wanted to help. Really help. Offers came in from US specialists, 3D printer manufacturers, Imperial College London engineers and several prosthetists in the UK. The BBC got in touch. Its Big Life Fix had a team of engineers who wanted to find a solution. We signed up straightaway.
The producers charged Yusuf Muhammad, an award-winning engineer and industrial designer, with developing a movable ankle. He came to our home in Hertfordshire, where Pollyanna laid out her 20 legs – each of which has been fitted and then discarded as she has grown. The BBC recorded her scampering about with the plastic cup attached to her foot and her dancing on her blade.
Yusuf was then filmed at Big Life Fix HQ discussing with his team how to develop a prosthetic leg with an ankle that could move in response to Pollyanna’s commands. They conclude that what she needs is “mechanically the hardest things you can do with a prosthetic”. And the answer, incredibly, is to be found in a standard bicycle.
Without giving too much away, the programme ends with Yusuf meeting us and opening a briefcase, in which lies a new foot and socket. It is not the finished article, but it’s a start. And then – tentatively at first – Pollyanna steps forward, walking on tiptoe, or demipointe. She twirls on one foot. Sarah and I hug Yusuf.
At the start of the show, Pollyanna says: “I want to be a dancer when I grow up.” Now we truly believe there’s no reason her dream cannot come true.