The
story of Veronica from Canada, who overcame all the odds
to live life as
no-one believed she could.
When I was born, my mom
was over the moon because she had been blessed with two beautiful, healthy daughters
(myself, and my older sister, Stephanie). Unfortunately, she noticed something
was different about me within minutes of holding me. One of my legs was the tiniest
bit shorter than the other. The doctors all told her over and over again that
it was nothing and that whatever it was was probably only temporary, so she took
me home.
When I was around 2 and I began trying to learn to walk, I was always complaining about a pain in my hip. There was one incident when I was around 3 (and I remember this part really well) in which my mom, my sister and I had just been driving for about 45 minutes to a mall to go shopping. When I tried to get out of the car, my leg locked up and I couldn't move it. I didn't want my mom to know, so I punched my hip to try to un-lock it. There was a searing pain all the way down my leg and I screamed. My mom ran to my door and was trying to ask me what was wrong, but I was in too much pain to tell her. To save the details, I'll skip straight to after we went to the doctor.
Anyways, it turns out that I was born with a dislocated hip and when I punched it, I did something pretty nasty to one of the muscles around the bone. So, when I was 4, I got scheduled for reconstructive surgery. Apparently (and I didn't know this until a few years ago...I'm 16 now) the doctors told my mom that I had only a 40% chance that I would ever walk again. When I got home from the hospital, I was given both a wheelchair and a walker. To this day, I don't know why they gave us both, but I'm thankful they did.
Luckily for me, my mom raised me to be a very stubborn person, so, on one of the days when I wasn't feeling very good (woozy and sick from painkillers and antibiotics), she rented Michael Flatley's Riverdance video. As I sat in our livingroom staring at the t.v screen, I watched that man fly across the stage with a look of absolute joy on his face and I was enthralled. I remember just watching his feet on the stage and wondering how he could make all those sounds while wearing running shoes (you have to remember I was only 4, so I hadn't heard of Irish Step Dancing). After watching that video, I refused to use my wheelchair anymore. I was stuck wearing a body cast for 4 months after the surgery, and after only 2 months, I forced myself out of the chair and crawled to the walker. I dragged myself up to a "standing" position, and from that day on that was how I got around. I built up "amazing upper body strength" (words of the surgeon) by pulling my body around, and once I got out of the cast and my leg had healed sufficiently, I asked my mom to enroll me in a dance school. She did just that and I started off in a pre-primary tap class.
Throughout the years, I had lots of x-rays, etc. to make sure my body wasn't falling apart (sorry..lack of better wording..), and after every single one of those appointments, I told my mom that I would one day cartwheel into the doctor's office to prove that I beat the odds. It has now been 12 years since my surgery, and I no longer have to go to the doctor's office. My hip is just fine (with a tiny limit on mobility, but whatever), and I have kept with dancing this whole time. I never got to cartwheel into my doctor's office, but I've accomplished so much more than that:
-I've been a dedicated tap dancer for 12 years
-I've taken several ISTD Tap exams and I've passed them all with A's and B's
-I've choreographed 3 dances, 1 of which is being entered in a festival under my name as a young choreographer
-I have met the man who gave me the will to keep walking.
Yes, last October my mom (who, by the way, deserves an award for always helping me and believing in me) took me to see Michael Flatley's Celtic Tiger in Victoria, Canada. I have never been more happy in my life than when watching one of MF's videos (I now have them all and watch them constantly), and when I first saw him come on stage I was over the moon. Then, at the meet and greet, I never got a chance to tell him how much it means to me that he spreads his joy with us because we were ushered out of there so fast. He did, however, ask me if I was having a good time, and all I could say was a small, "Yes..."
So, thank you, Michael, for being the reason so many of us get the inspiration to accomplish dreams and overcome obstacles. I know I would be in a wheelchair to this day had my mom not brought home your video for me.
Veronica Stockton-Kushner.
Victoria, Canada, June 2006.