BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio—Just like her room on Princess Way, 5-year-old Hemi Shifflett lights up, showing off her toys, trophies, dresses, bike, her five brothers and sisters —and her wheelchair.
- The Butler County girl has a bone disease that causes her to become paralyzed and collapse
- Her parents say it started when she was 3 and it’s expected to get worse
- She is getting ready for corrective surgery, which gives her a 50 percent chance of walking with no problems
“I get it in when my legs hurt,” said Shifflett.
She uses it when her legs hurt.
Her mom says it’s a sign of the illness that’s been slowly paralyzing her for the past two years.
“She started collapsing after school, after she’d be on her legs all day, and there would be times she would be on the potty and she would tell me she couldn’t stand up, and I would get her up thinking her legs just fell asleep, and she would just collapse,” said Crystal Shifflett, Hemi’s mother.
She says at just three years old, her daughter was diagnosed.
“They diagnosed her with juvenile arthritis, and she wound up having MRI after MRI, and they came to the new diagnosis of Legg-Calve-Perthes disease," said Crystal Shifflett.
It’s a deteriorating bone disease that she says causes her daughter’s leg and hip bones to grind together so bad, that it leads to paralysis.
And she says it will only get worse unless they do something drastic.
“If we don’t get the surgery, she will be paralyzed, it will paralyze her… with the surgery, there’s a 50 percent chance that she will regain normalcy in walking,” said Crystal Shifflett.
With a 50 percent chance she’ll walk with no problems, little Hemi is about to go through corrective surgery —two of them —that will leave her in excruciating pain, bedridden and in a full body cast for weeks.
“I’m nervous, I’m mad that it happened to her,” said Crystal Shifflett.
But she says it’ll all be worth it when she can see Hemi doing what she loves.
“My baby begs on a daily basis to put her in dance class… if I can have one little ounce of hope to let her do what she wants to do, then I will do what it takes,” said Crystal Shifflett.