Riverside Student Celebrates Anniversary Of Surgery

Crystal Tobeck couldn’t remember a day without pain.

But now - because of a grueling surgical procedure - Tobeck has a spring in her step.

Celebrating the first anniversary since her surgery, the eighth grader from Riverside Middle School leaps and dances across the floor of the physical therapy room.

“It’s amazing,” classmate Veronica Toner says.

Crystal’s disability began at age 3 when she was run over by a riding lawn mower. Her leg was horribly mangled and doctors feared she would die.

“They managed to reconstruct the leg and it looked real good until she began to grow,” Crystal’s mother Lindy Tobeck said.

While the outside of her leg was growing normally, the inside of the leg eventually stopped growing altogether. By age 8, Crystal’s left knee was bent unnaturally out from its socket. As the years passed, her gait became more and more wobbly. School physical therapist Robin Moug iced Crystal’s knee almost every day.

“She would have eventually lost her leg,” Tobeck said. “It was getting dysfunctional to the point that it was unusable.”

School principal Mike Jordan said Crystal’s pain became more severe. Finally, last year when Crystal was 12, a doctor at Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Spokane offered to try a new procedure on her.

“I had tried to talk Crystal into going ahead with a prosthesis,” Tobeck said. “Crystal was the one who said, ‘I’d like to do this, mom.’

“We had nothing to lose.”

At Shriners, doctors operated for nine hours breaking Crystal’s femur bones and inserting pins. The pins were connected to a wire cage that encircled Crystal’s thigh.

Three times a day for five months, Crystal would turn the pins - separating the bone - and forcing it to produce bone marrow to fill the gap. In five months, Crystal’s left femur was forced to grow two inches.

The bone growth was dependant on how much Crystal walked. Her first big journey was across the skywalk from Shriners to Deaconess Children’s Hospital where her classmate Veronica Toner was being treated for a brain tumor.

“They were really each other’s strength,” Veronica’s mom said. “The skywalk was a lifeline between them.”

Both girls have recovered.

Now the pain is a memory that Crystal doesn’t like to stir up. But Robyn Moug remembers. Crystal had to turn the pins because only she knew how much pain she could tolerate.

Crystal herself had to guard against infection in the open wounds on her skin and in her bone.

“It’s the kid who had to do all the work,” Moug said. “She’s a special kid.”

Despite the medical procedure, Crystal kept a high grade point average and remained on the honor roll. Having spent so much time with Moug, Crystal decided she wants to be a physical therapist someday.

On the first anniversary of her surgery, Moug bought a cake for Crystal. Two of her friends and her teachers came to watch videos taken of Crystal for five years before her surgery.

“You stop and look at the child,” Jordan said. “She’s turned out for volleyball just like an able-bodied child in every way now.”