11-Year-Old Boy Gets His Wish To Have Right Leg Amputated


An 11-year-old boy, living in San Francisco – but originally from Israel – got his wish to have his leg amputated so that he can enjoy a better quality of life.

Amit Vigoda suffers from a rare orthopedic condition called congenital pseudoarthrosis of the tibia and fibula with osteofibrous dysplasia, an agonizing condition which causes his right leg to continually fracture.

Amit is in a constant state of pain and is only able to walk at all with the help of crutches. His condition is so painful that his mother is often woken in the middle of the night by his screams.

To give you a taste of what life is like for the Vigoda family, who total six in number, including Amit’s siblings, Mrs Vigoda wrote on her personal blog:

I awake to a familiar screech. ‘Mommmmmyyyy……HELP!” So begins my biweekly sleep-run to my 11-year-old’s bedside. ‘Mommmmmyyyy……I want to cut it off, I can’t stand it anymore…I hate my leg… make it stop,’ he hollers, eyes wide open yet not quite awake.

Amit, who is crazy about soccer, was born with a broken leg and has had multiple surgeries to correct the problem, including internal rods and an ‘external fixation’ which saw rods, nuts and bolts fitted through his bone, muscle and tissue.

According to Mrs Vigoda none of these solutions worked, and within a year her son’s leg would once again be fractured. After years of broken legs and pain the family finally reached the difficult but necessary decision, for Amit’s leg to be amputated.

He is due to have his below-the-knee amputation on April 10 at Shriner’s children’s hospital in Sacramento, California. It is hoped that around six weeks after the operation, Amit will be fitted with a state of the art prosthetic lower leg and within three months should be able to walk.

Mrs Vigoda wrote in her blog: “Now the die is cast, and his amputation surgery is scheduled for early April. This decision was not entirely mine–it was ours. Amit has chosen this route and his father and I, along with our family and friends, will be there with him.”

Amit also has a blog of his own and he posted a message on it sharing his feelings about the upcoming operation:

This spring, I will take a huge step in this journey and amputate my right foot… This will allow me to live a much richer life and be more active and do more of what I love – soccer, running, biking, swimming and so on. I can tell you now that I am scared. This whole thing is freaking me out. I will probably not be as polite, or charismatic as I would like to appear but I promise you this – I will be candid and I will be real.

This would be a difficult decision for an adult to take. For an 11-year-old boy, the process is unimaginable.

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