Amputee Rehabilitation and Exercise News

Written by Chris Davis, Staff Reporter greenwich-post.com
Friday, 22 January 2010 00:00

YMCA Marlins Diving Club star Kirsten Parkinson, 13, has received support from her diving coach Billy McGowan of the YMCA. —Chris Davis photo

Back in the third grade, Kirsten Parkinson helped her grandmother raise $20,000 to get a dog. She did a walkathon at school and got money from her dad. She and her sisters netted about $800 just from lemonade stands, raking in as much as $400 in one day alone. She handed out flyers, got her schoolmates interested and hauled in more through coin drives.

“Because of all the stuff we did,” she said, “me and my mom and dad got to go over there and see where our money was going to.” And she got to pick out the dog.

There was Bosnia. The program was to sponsor a dog trained to sniff out landmines. And Kirsten had the name of the dog already picked out — Nutmeg — all she had to do was pick out the dog to fit it.

“It was like this huge honor to be able to pick out the dog,” Kirsten said. “There were six dogs going to Lebanon and out of the six I got to pick whichever one I wanted to be Nutmeg. I picked a long-haired German shepherd to be Nutmeg. She was incredible.”

Bosnia was “just incredible,” she said. “It’s just so different. There are bullet holes in the buildings and people are so impoverished. It’s crazy because it’s just so different.” She got to walk by the mine fields and see the dogs at work.

While she was there, Kirsten met a girl who was a couple of years older than she and who had received a prosthetic limb through the same program and sponsored by an American girl, near Kirsten’s age.

“Since I was sponsoring a dog already,” Kirsten said. “I was like, ‘maybe I should get involved with that program too.’”

It looked like fun to Kirsten because the two girls stayed in touch through Skype and talked all the time.

“When I found out there was something I could do, too, and that there were kids my age that did it, I decided maybe I could be a part of this too,” Kirsten says.

With a $6,000 donation, Champs International will provide a custom-made and fitted prosthetic limb to a young land-mine victim in Bosnia. A lot of the prosthetics available over there, Kirsten learned, are so poorly made that they cause the patient a lot of pain. Many young amputees live their lives with improper prosthetics, some that hurt them so much they cry.

“Ones that aren’t made for you, they’ve said, are just horribly uncomfortable … and they’ve had traumatic experiences with these awful prosthetics,” Kirsten says. “So the custom ones are fitted to them so they’re more normal and don’t feel so mechanical.”

Now 13, Kirsten Parkinson, who also happens to be a star diver with the Greenwich Family YWCA Marlins Diving Club, is on a mission. She has organized a dive-a-thon, with the help of the Y and her coach, for this Saturday, Jan. 23, at the YMCA natatorium from 10 to 2. Aside from a blue-and-gold diving and swimming competition there will also be water polo. “We’re going to do as best we can to be entertaining,” she says with a smile.

The goal is to reach the $6,000 mark to buy at least one high-tech limb for a young amputee land mine victim.

“I don’t know who it’s going to help or where it’s going to go to,” Kirsten said, “but I know we need $6,000 to help one kid.

“I hope to someday meet the child I’ve helped in person,” she added. “I’ve seen people meet the child they’ve sponsored and the instant bond and appreciation for each other is one of the most precious and rare things you’ll ever witness.”

Kirsten has been invited to the White House to be honored for her work. “I started sponsoring a dog and the school started sponsoring a dog, and my family sponsored a couple of dogs. It just kind of became this huge Champs campaign and just kept growing and growing and growing.”