Loss of a leg no setback for Ollie

Just as Ollie Wedding was finding his feet, his parents made the tough — but ultimately liberating — decision to amputate part of his right leg.

Just as Ollie Wedding was finding his feet, his parents made the tough - but ultimately liberating - decision to amputate part of his right leg.

Prenatal scan showed Meg and Andrew that their first child was missing a shinbone. His ankle and foot weren’t properly formed.

Any fears they had about their son’s future, were put to rest in the office of the Royal Children’s Hospital’s head of orthopaedics.

The late surgeon Ian Torode told the heavily pregnant Mrs Wedding that the rare birth defect fibular hemimelia - seen once every 40,000 births - would not define their son.

HOW SURGERY GAVE HARRY A SHOT AT LIFE

LITTLE MACKENZIE’S UP FOR THE TOUGH FIGHT

MORE GOOD FRIDAY APPEAL NEWS

Ollie Wedding with some of the prosthetic legs he has outgrown. Pictures: Jay Town

“He showed me all these photos of amazing kids with prosthetics. He said Ollie’s just like any other kid; there won’t be anything different. It put it all into perspective for us,” she said.

And Ollie hasn’t let them down.

Six weeks after the below-knee amputation at age 18 months he got his first prosthetic leg.

He was running two days later.

Supported by the Limb Difference Clinic at the RCH - and its staff of prosthetists, physiotherapists, surgeon, social worker and occupational therapist - they regularly monitor his gait and keep up with the custom-made prosthetic legs so the four-year-old can keep up with life.

Dad, Andrew watches as prosthetist Phoebe Thompson fits Ollie’s leg and blade.

Ollie is now stepping out on his sixth leg; each hand made and covered in the chosen material of each young patient. He is the youngest child at the RCH to be fitted with a blade.

“He tells me it makes him faster,” Mrs Wedding said. “I can see the difference in him, and the freedom he feels.

“He is running wherever we go now.”

There is a plaster cast made of his leg and two-toed foot on standby to help answer questions he has in the future.

Not that Ollie is looking back.

Ollie doesn’t get mad when his two-year-old brother Ethan wants to put on his leg. He just tells him simply; ‘You have two feet, you don’t need my special leg’.

Even when other kids returned home from day care to tell their parents another kid’s leg fell off that day, he shrugs it off.

Ollie’s new leg and blade are fine-tuned.

The boy from Curlewis on the Bellarine Peninsula is the face of this year’s Good Friday Appeal, the annual fundraiser for new equipment, staff training and medical research at the Royal Children’s Hospital.

“Nothing is going to stop this kid,” she said. “Whatever he puts his mind to, he’ll be very determined and he will achieve it. I think he’s going to move mountains.”

To donate to the Good Friday Appeal go to goodfridayappeal.com.au

2019 Good Friday Appeal official poster with Ollie Wedding.