OLLIE’S LEG-UP FOR HOSPITAL APPEAL
JUST as Ollie Wedding was finding his feet, his parents made the tough – but ultimately liberating – decision to amputate part of his right leg.
Prenatal scans showed Meg and Andrew that their first child was missing a shinbone. His ankle and foot weren’t formed properly.
Any fears they had about their son’s future were put to rest at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, which assured them that the rare birth defect fibular hemimelia – seen once every 40,000 births – would not define their son.
And Ollie hasn’t let them down. Six weeks after the below-knee amputation at age 18 months he got his first prosthetic leg – and he was running two days later.
Ollie is now stepping out on his sixth leg; each handmade and covered in the chosen material of the young patient. He is the youngest child at the RCH to be fitted with a blade.
“He tells me it makes him faster,” Mrs Wedding said. “I can see the difference in him, and the freedom he feels. He is running wherever we go now.”
There is a plaster cast made of his leg and two-toed foot on standby to help answer questions he has in the future.
The boy from Curlewis, on the Bellarine Peninsula, is the face of this year’s Good Friday Appeal, the annual fundraiser for new equipment, staff training and medical research at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Go to goodfridayappeal .com.au to donate.