Back to Curtis

Last week we took our daughter back to see Dr. Thomas Graham at Curtis National Hand Center. This was our first real appointment at Curtis. Our first visit was during the monthly clinic the Center offers for those seeking initial consultations for children with congenital hand differences.

As I previously detailed, our daughter has a small thumb and a pinky finger on her right hand. She is missing her index, middle and ring finger. The growth of the hand so far has allowed her to form a very functional pincher grip.

Overall the discussion was as positive as we could've hoped for. Dr. Graham was as optimistic about our daughter's hand function as he and the others physicians were during her initial clinic visit. It was Dr. Graham who first diagnosed her condition as "transverse failure to form." Meaning it is not connected to any other conditions and is very unlikely to have been passed on genetically. In his words, it was a "lighting strike."

The bottom-line from this appointment is that there is really nothing more to do in the short-term other than continue watching our daughter develop. We are seeing one more specialist at Shriners later this month. Provided his guidance doesn't dramatically differ from the 1/2 dozen others doctors we've seen, my wife and I have agreed that we've heard enough to be confident that our daughter is lucky to have the level of function she has and that there are no procedures we need to plan for in the near future.