Thursday, February 19, 2009

Paulina's hero


I assigned Paulina to write an essay about her hero. Here it is.


My Hero
By: Paulina Fuller


My hero is my Doctor, Dr. Herring. He has changed my life in many ways.
Dr. Herring did two surgeries on me. In the first surgery he cut off my foot cause it was in the way of me walking, so I could like not walk. Then I got prosthetics and learned how to walk. Then for my second surgery that was on my other leg on my condile you probably don’t know what that is. It’s a bone that sticks out of your leg. One of my condiles on my left leg was growing sideways. I could not even wear jeans. That was bad. So he did a surgery on that condile and he like shaved it down a little and now I get to wear jeans. And now that bone doesn’t grow so funny.
Because I got my legs, I love to dance. That’s one of my hobbies. The kinds of dance I do, in case you are wondering, I do two jazz classes, and tap, ballet, hip hop and clogging and I do solos. On one of my solos for this year I start out with my legs and then I go in a mirror and I take my legs off and change clothes and I am just me! It’s called a lyrical dance, if you want to know. On my other solo, I just leave my legs off for the whole song and do Girls just want to have fun. It has lots of flips and gymnastics in it. Clogging was hard because I did it with my legs on and my legs don’t bend at the ankle and I can’t point my toes. But then we decided to try it a different way. My mom got me some large clogging shoes, and I use one of those and one of my last year’s shoes. I have a small foot on my left and I put the small clogging show on that and I put the big clogging shoe on the other leg. I put both shoes on backwards! I bet you can’t clog backwards! It looks really cool, cause my shoes are two sizes and they are backwards. My dance teacher thinks it would be fun for me to go out in my backwards clogging shoes with a hat on backwards and sunglasses on the back of my head. I love dance.
Dr. Herring works in Dallas at a hospital called Scottish Rite. At Scottish Rite a lot of people like me go there so they can be fixed up and almost have a normal life. It’s a really fun place. They have fun doctors and fun movies and when you have surgeries they have a lot of art stuff and sometimes people come and do stuff for us. The minute you walk in there is a really tall ceiling and hanging from it is this bike thing with two people riding it and stuffed animals and stuff, but it’s not real. The add something new almost every year. They also have popcorn, it’s really good, but you have to pay for it, but it’s really cheap, only a quarter and you can get a big one for 50 cents. They have a lot of fish, when I was little and I went there, every time I saw the fish or the trains I would stop and stair, cause they are so cool. They have a store with a lot of pretty stuff, but my favorite thing to buy there is gum, well and the toys and the animals (I am an animal person) After you have surgery the nurses have faces on their nametag and you get to pick how you feel. And people there always have stuff for you, if you are good sometimes you get animals or something. They have elevators to go to every floor and they have mirrors in them even on the ceiling. If you get a prosthetic you can choose what fabric or if you want to look normal you can choose skin. But I always choose the fabric so I won’t be boring. Right now I have Hannah Montana. I go to Wal Mart to get my fabric, but you can get some in prosthetics too. They can make lots of different kinds of prosthetics. They can make running ones that are kind of bendy and have a loop kind of foot and you can run really fast and bounce. When I get in seventh grade I am planning to get some of those legs and do track.
And Camp! The hospital lets us go to out on a limb. I have a friend whose dad runs the camp and she gets to live there. We are best buds. It’s so much fun, you get to go everywhere on golf carts. In the summer we get to go for a whole week and in the winter we get to bring our families, which is cool, cause you get to meet everyone. They also have horses, and miniature golf and a swimming pool we get to go to in the summer and a theater. All that stuff I just said, only happens in the summer, but the movie theater is in the winter also and the golf. They also have games and toys and fish and popcorn and stuff. They have a cool 80’s bathroom. And when you walk through those castle doors, it’s magic, stars on the ceiling and the stage and cool beanbags. They have a backstage too. The way cool thing about camp is everybody has something missing, they are all different like me, so I don’t feel different. Every body at least has one or two limbs missing. So nobody looks at me funny even if I take off my legs.
Dr. Herring, this is the part why he is my hero, he is the one who runs the hospital and he is my doctor which is really cool. He thinks my little foot is cool, I don’t know why, but he just does, he even takes pictures of it. And the very best thing is he is trying he is trying to find a way for me to meet Hannah Montana. He is just a cool doctor, I can’t explain it, he just is. That’s why he is my hero.

1 comment:

votemom said...

i hope you sent him a copy of this - how special!