“Shriners was home. It was comfort. It was care. It was being surrounded by family.”
When Krissy reflects on her care at Shriners Children’s New England, she doesn't sound like someone who spent the majority of her childhood in a hospital. Diagnosed with a rare skeletal disorder when she was 2, Krissy became a patient at the original site of Shriners Hospitals for Children on Carew Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. When a new facility was built next to the hospital in 1990, she was the very first patient wheeled through the doors. Recently, she walked back through those same doors, an emotional return to the place she credits with helping to shape her life today.
When she was a baby, Krissy’s parents noticed a difference in the length of her legs that affected her mobility. After seeing several specialists, she was diagnosed with Ollier disease and Maffucci syndrome. Both disorders involve deformity around the joints, limitations in joint mobility, bone shortening, leg-length discrepancy, gait disturbances, pain, loss of function and frequent fractures. Patients with these conditions also develop benign tumors of cartilage, called enchondromas, within the bones.
With very limited options, Krissy’s family sought treatment close to home at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Springfield. She had a bone graft when she was 3, and began her first round of leg-lengthening treatment when she was 5. From kindergarten through fifth grade, Krissy was never able to participate in a full school year. Thanks to an onsite teacher at Shriners Children's, a tutor, a cooperative school system and her strong work ethic, Krissy persevered. “I always felt like I was playing catch-up, and had to work much harder to try to keep up,” she said. “This really drove my approach to work and life – work hard, and make it happen!”
When Krissy was 9, she had a second, and much longer, round of leg-lengthening treatment after a femur fracture and stint in a body cast when she was 6. Instead of focusing on the difficult times, Krissy remembers Friday-night pizza dinners, dances and holiday celebrations. “I think about all of the joy and laughter,” she said. “More importantly, I think about how I had a whole team rooting for me. People who cared about me in ways I probably didn’t even fully realize at the time.”
Being an integral part of the opening ceremonies for the new hospital building – now Shriners Children’s New England – is one of Krissy’s fondest memories. “I remember riding in the parade just like it was yesterday. I felt like such a star!” she said. “And meeting the very first patient from the original hospital when it opened in 1925 was just amazing.”
