Our story from Elijah’s pov:
Hi! My name is Elijah and I am nine months old. For as long as I can remember I have a strange knee. It’s bigger than my other knee, its looks funny, I cant move it, and it hurts. I have taken lots of long car rides and have met lots of nice people over the last seven months who have been trying to help my family find out what’s going on but everyone says im special and sends me to go show new doctors. I wish I had a name for what’s special about my knee but all the doctors I’ve played with say they have never seen anything like it before so they cant tell me what to call it yet.
Every day I get bigger and stronger and more and more excited! One day I would like to run really fast and jumper super high, maybe dance with my mommy while she sings with me and cooks dinner for us. For right now I just wish I could crawl…. I see other kids playing, standing, and walking and when I try it hurts and even when I find my own way to try I fall and get hurt. It makes me so sad and angry that I cry but my mommy always picks me up and helps me try to figure it out another way so I don’t feel left out. She is nice to me and tells me we will learn how to do things together so i never stop trying no matter how hard it gets!
We just seen that super smart doctors at Shriners Children’s Hospital in South Carolina (5/31/25) and they took more scary pictures of my special knee to try and tell us what’s going on, I didn’t like being in my car seat for twelve hours that day to get there but Im really happy they didn’t poke me again to test my blood or make me take the sleepy medicine doctors give me when they take pictures with the loud scary spinning machine (those pictures are called MRI’s!). I hate that sleepy medicine because it makes me feel confused and it’s stop hard to do anything but I don’t want to go to sleep unless Im in bed with all my stuffed animals. The doctors at Shriners said I need surgery but that I have to go to a different doctor called an oncologist so now I get to go to Atlanta, Georgia soon! They said they are sending me on an emergency request so I don’t have to wait. This time I think I get to ride in an airplane so Im super excited!
Mommy has been really busy the last few days with important phone calls so she hasn’t been able to play with me much which makes me sad. I see her on the phone when I wake up and she doesn’t stop even when I go to sleep at bedtime…. I hear her telling everyone about me, our story, and all our adventures. I over heard her tell the doctors on our last trip that she will find a way to take me anywhere I need to go to get help so I guess its really important.
I know she tired and I think she’s scared too, maybe that’s why she wont nap with me. Her voice is starting to sound funny and when she tells our story on the phone she gets sniffly sometimes but she never lets me see her cry. Over the last few days she has made hundreds of phone calls all over the country and some even to other countries and now we have some new friends that are trying to help us! One of them told us that we should make this account to spread our story and let more people help.
So I was wondering if maybe now that you know my story, can you help me so that maybe one day I can take a walk with you?
