Hand coach Tredwell inspired by daughter’s perseverance
MADISON — Tim Tredwell will take his Daniel Hand girls basketball team to Winsted on Monday to face No. 1 seed Northwestern Regional.
A win will advance Hand to the CIAC Class MM semifinals. If Northwestern prevails, coach Fred Williams, in his 45th season, will set the state record of 705 career victories.
“I got my first head coaching job at 34,” Tredwell, 47, said. “So that would be another 31 years for me. Am I even going to be alive? I can’t imagine sustaining that level of success for that long. It is so impressive.”
Williams has two daughters who assist him, and it brings him great joy. He said recently he probably would have retired a long time ago if not for them.
Tredwell smiles. He knows the joy of daughters.
Emily, a 14-year-old freshman at Middletown High, was born in New Haven with a congenital femoral deficiency. Her right femur did not develop. It was a shock to Tim and Kate Tredwell.
She had managed to squirm around and only the left leg was measured. At first, it was thought to be hip dysplasia. “A couple of days later, the doctor comes in with a stack of folders,” Tim said. “They tell us what they think it is. Of all the things you’re worried about when your kid is born, that’s not in the top 50.”
They immediately were sent to an orthopedist, who talked them through it, who said he had seen patients like this.
“He said, ‘It’s probably easier to amputate,’” Tredwell said. “Emily’s two days old. She hasn’t even been home yet. Your mind is running wild.”
Amputate at the ankle, they were told, fuse the knee so the tibia-fibula becomes one piece. By the time she is fully grown it will appear like an amputation below the knee and Emily can use a prosthetic leg.
“As parents, we’re deciding for a kid who has no say in it,” Tim said.
Tim, a physical education teacher at John Winthrop Middle School in Deep River, and Kate, a nurse who does home care from Middlesex Hospital, met with specialists. Desperate, they kept hunting.
Word surfaced of Dr. Dror Paley at John Hopkins.
“He was leaving Johns Hopkins for Florida and not taking any new patients,” Tim said. “He told my wife if you can make it down here on a Saturday, he’ll open the place up and we’ll talk.”
Needless to say, they were in the car driving to Baltimore.
Born in Canada, Paley is fluent in six languages. He was trained in Siberia by Gavriil Ilizarov, known for inventing the apparatus to lengthen bones. Paley has developed more than 100 surgical procedures to reconstruct limbs.
“He looks at her X-rays,” Tredwell said. “He looks at her. He moves around. He goes, ‘Yeah, we can fix that.’
“I’ll never forget we were in the lobby afterward getting
ready to drive home, calling everybody. Obviously, we’re very emotional. The place is deserted. He comes out of the elevator, just nods his head to us and keeps walking.”
Calm. Cool. As if he had just diagnosed Emily with the common cold.
“Obviously,” Tim said, “It’s extraordinarily challenging.”
There was a SUPERhip procedure at age 2. A leg lengthening at age 4, another at 8 and 12. An external fixator is used. It’s essentially a metal frame with small rods (called pins) that pierce the skin into the bone. There are adjustable struts that are turned slowly to lengthen the bone.
“Sixteen wounds and a little Allen wrench turned four times a day, a millimeter a day,” Tim said. “That’s actually the easiest part. It’s the physical therapy four times a day where you’re trying to stretch the ligaments and tendons …
“There were times when Emily was 4 when my wife had her knee in her back and was stretching her quads. I’m in front of her holding her hand. She’s screaming in my face.’”
Even now, the memory shakes Tredwell.
Emily has had 20 surgeries.
The Paley Orthopedic & Spine Institute at St. Mary’s Medical Center that opened in 2009 is in West Palm Beach, Fla. When Emily was 10, Tim and Kate calculated she had spent 1/10th life of her life there.
Except for some camps, Tredwell had only coached boys before landing the girls head coaching job at Hand. Emily was 15 months old. He inherited Kerry Wallack, one of the state’s top players who would go on to play at Rhode Island.
“I thought I stepped into a gold mine,” he said.
One problem. Wallack would tear up her knee in soccer and miss her senior season.
Tredwell, who stands 6foot-9 and played at Elmira, had to learn to build a program. And so he did, 235 wins in 14 seasons and a state title in 2017.
When Emily was 5, she asked if she could ride home on the team bus. Of course, she could. Those girls were her role models. She went to Tredwell’s basketball camp one year wearing a big lift and big brace. She had a steal one day.
“It was the highlight of my week,” Tredwell said.
It would be great to say there were no problems along the way. That wouldn’t be the truth. In 2016, Tredwell’s beloved Cubs won the World Series. His 2016-17 team, led by Gabby Martin, won the Class L championship. Still, he remembers the summer of 2016 as the worst of his life.
When theg journey started, Paley told him technology was advancing quickly and to remain flexible. In 2016, she had an internal lengthening device inserted in her right leg. It started with multiple bone infections. It ended with five surgeries.
“We’ve gained length and then lost length,” Tredwell said.
So it was back to the external fixator.
“Emily is a really kind kid,” he said. “She’s extraordinarily empathic. High honors student. Also, a wicked sense of humor.”
Still middle school and high school can be cruel. People stare. Running in front of kids causes anxiety. Nobody wants to wear a lift, so she avoids it and has what her dad calls a little hitch in her giddy up.
“The last couple of years have been tough for her,” Tim said.
Emily decided she wanted to try out for volleyball last fall. Dad and daughter practiced in the driveway and yard during the summer. Her touch, Tim said, is great. Her lateral movement isn’t. There were 80 kids trying out and Emily said she was willing to be a manager.
“After Day 3, she goes, ‘Dad, I made the freshman team,’” Tredwell said. “It was like the greatest moment of my life. She asked me what numbers Gabby Martin and Sarah Wohlgemuth wore. Those were the kids she looked up to.
“I don’t think our current players understand all she has gone through. She comes to the games, cheers, yells. My earlier teams all knew. They did fundraisers for her. She is kind of the players’ peers now. What kid in the ninth grade wants to be a special case? ‘Oh, are you OK?’ Nobody wants to hear that.”
When Paley saw her in August, Emily did hear what she wanted. She has skeletal maturity. There will be a 21st surgery and, if everything works out, it will be the last one.
There is five centimeters (about two inches) of lengthening to go.
The family will start their drive for West Palm Beach on Easter Sunday. They have to rent a place for four months. Kate will not be working. Paige, 11, and dad will fly home to finish the school year.
Paige is graduating from elementary school and, if all goes well, Emily and Kate will fly home to see her graduate and take Paige back to Florida. Dad will remain in Connecticut through his basketball camp.
In early August, they will all drive home. From there, X-rays will be sent to Paley. When it’s all good, they’ll return to Florida to have the external fixator removed.
When she is finished, Emily will stand 5-5. An epiphysiodesis, a procedure which drills into the growth plates and restricts growth, was performed.
“It gained us about an inch,” Tim said.
The external fixator does mean no volleyball this fall, but she could play as a junior and senior. Or maybe Emily will do something else with her equally sized legs.
After all these years and 21 surgeries, the world will be hers to walk.…
If all this sounds horribly expensive, well, it is. Kate’s parents and Tim’s mom have helped out over the years. Still, along with medical bills not covered by insurance, there’s the cost of running two households for four months. A GoFundMe page with a goal of $10,000 to complete Emily’s treatment recently was started. www.gofundme.com/f/emilys-leg-lengtheningjourney.