Chloe's Smile Matches Her Bright Future

When Chloe and her mother, Magdaleine, touched down in St. Louis in mid-January, they were greeted by cold weather.

They walked out of St. Louis Lambert International Airport into a midwestern winter. Snowflakes and icicles are a far cry from the weather they’re used to in their home country of St. Lucia. However, it’s not their first visit to Missouri or Shriners Children’s St. Louis.

17-year-old Chloe was born with bow leggedness of the left tibia and leg length differences due to Blount’s disease.

“Blount’s disease is associated with leg deformity. Chloe’s type is infantile Blount’s. It was present when she was between 18 months and two years old,” explained Mark Miller, M.D., a Shriners Children’s St. Louis surgeon.

Magdaleine said Chloe was bullied at school because of her deformity. She was left out and ostracized. Verbal abuse led Chloe to have a deflated sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

“We, in my home country, are not sensitizing our kids enough to appreciate the kids who are differently abled,” said Magdaleine.

Magdaleine would do anything to take this pain away from her child, she'd even fly 2,500 miles to a foreign country.

Thanks to a partnership with World Pediatric Project, Chloe was brought to Shriners Children’s St. Louis in 2018. At that point, Miller used an external fixator to correct the deformity and gain length in her left leg.

Eight months later, when Chloe and Magdaleine finally returned to St. Lucia, they were hopeful for a different experience at school and in her community.

“I was happy to see that she’d be accepted like everyone else,” said Magdaleine.

For the most part, she was accepted. However, as her teenage years marched on, Chloe continued to grow taller. She began to have new pains; a new problem.

So, Chloe sought help again through World Pediatric Project in 2021. The Shriners Children’s team decided to bring her back to St. Louis for a second highly skilled surgery/treatment plan to lengthen her leg again and correct a slight deformity.

“How bowed her leg was hid her knock knee deformity. This was mild but it bothered her. It needed to be corrected so it didn’t cause her pain,” explained Miller.

Miller used an internal nail to correct her knock knee and inserted a magnetic rod, called an Ellipse nail, into her femur.

“This is a nail that has a magnet inside the rod that’s attached to a series of rotors that aid in the lengthening process. An external magnet (outside the body) communicates with the internal magnet (inside the nail). If you run it for seven minutes, it will lengthen the nail by one millimeter. If our goal is 30 centimeters of length, we’d continue the process for 30 days,” said Miller.