About Us

A little about us. My husband (Wayne) and I (Susan) became parents of a little girl, Samantha Nicole, on November 8, 2000. Samantha was born 5 weeks early and within her first 24 hours, she had a TEF repair (her situation was that her esophogus ended in a pouch and her stomach attached to her trachea).

It was while she was in the NICU that we noticed her tiny thumbs. She had bilateral hypoplasia. Right hand was ranked type 4, where basically the little thumb just dangled by a thread. her left thumb was ranked type 3, whereas there was some function, but the joint was fused and it was very weak.

Her right thumb had a pollicization procedure when she was 9 months old. It's her 3 finger hand and she is totally cool with asking for and giving "High 4's". We met with a family from our Facebook group and the 2 girls were very happy to be calling eachother their BFFFF (Best Four Fingered Friend Forever)

Her left hand had not been deemed necessary for the pollicization. So instead she had 2 separate surgical procedures to reconstruct the thumb. The first procedure opened up the webbing between her thumb and index finger and the second procedure moved a tendon from her pinky across to her thumb. It's weaker than her right hand, but it does the job.

While in the NICU they told us about VACTERLS. You can read more about that here http://www.webmd.com/children/vacterl-association

She plays the trumpet is a terrific artist. She draws, does cross stitch, sews and for a time, she was knitting. Oh and those are her hands on the home page. She does nail art (righty and lefty!!! I can't do that!!)

Things she is interested in: Supernatural, Walking Dead, Kingdom Hearts and horror flicks.

So far we haven't found anything that she can not do.