Do you see anything unusual in this picture? It took me 14 years to notice. It's not her very nice nails.
I'm mildly embarrassed to admit that I never noticed her "difference".
Hannah's thumbs are smooth.
No wrinkles on either one.
That means she can't bend them. She is missing the distal phalange on her thumbs.
Well, actually she has the bones. They aren't officially fused, but they have no tendons or muscles to move them.
Hannah has had many occupational therapists in her lifetime. Not one of them every noticed it.
She's had at least five pediatricians and one family physician. Nobody noticed.
She gets salon manicures every so often. Nobody noticed.
I've been living with her for 14 years AND I've been her teacher the entire time, and I never noticed it.
She has great penmanship, she can play the piano (and soon enough, the guitar). She can tie her shoes, sew, use chopsticks on occasion, and pretty much do everything she needs to do. She just can't bend the upper part of her thumbs.
Hannah was the one who showed me. She was practicing her spelling words. She likes to finger spell them to help her remember them (making a motor memory for each word). She was spelling some word that had an "o" in it. And it looked like this:
 |
| Wow, that's kinda glowing, isn't it? |
So after I figured out what was going on, I tried to dig up information, thinking that it was something related to the extra chromosome. I know that the pinky finger frequently is missing a bone, but I couldn't find anything regarding thumbs. I mentioned it to our most fabulous pediatrician (the most thorough in the world), and she researched it. Nada.
Hannah was eavesdropping when I was telling someone about her weird thumbs, and she said, "Mom, were you talking about my incredible thumbs?"
Yup, I sure was. And that's what we call them now. Incredible Thumbs.
One more unique thing about my kid.
5 comments:
That is wild. And the fact that she has mastered everything so well that no one noticed in all these years is amazing. The first thing I thought of was tying her shoes. I don't know if I could do that without bending my thumbs.
Hannah is awesome!
That IS interesting! Christopher has u usual thumbs too. They are backwards! Where we bend our thumb in towards our palm, that is like jacking your thumb backwards towards your wrist for us! :)
That is so cool! I'm gonna go look at Beth's!
That is awesome that all this time she has done everything with out being able to bend her thumbs..its so amazing to see them find a way to do things and improvise..my neighbor's little girl has arthogyposis and she dont really have any muscle in her arms..so it is really hard for her to even bend her arms..and i am always amazed at how she has her own ways of doing things..but it works..so why not!!!:) "
Post a Comment