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Magnets Put Her On Her Own 2 Feet

Tribune photo by CANDACE C. MUNDY

Gidian Holbrook, 11, goes through the process of limb lengthening. The unit is used to extend the prosthesis implanted after she was treated for with Ewings Sarcoma.

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By DONNA KOEHN

dkoehn@tampatrib.com

Published: November 15, 2008

Updated: 11/15/2008 12:17 am

TAMPA - Gidian Holbrook, 11, had Space Mountain on her mind.

But first, she had to stick her leg through that magnet thingie. It would only be about 15 minutes, but to a girl making a short stop on her way to the Magic Kingdom with her family and best friend, it might as well have been 15 hours.

There was a time when Space Mountain that day would have been out of the question. To achieve the same outcome would have meant invasive surgery, a long recovery and, at best, Disney by wheelchair.

But Gidian, with a handful of other pediatric bone cancer patients, has a special prosthesis that responds to a one-of-a-kind device developed by Douglas Letson, division chief of the sarcoma department at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Center.

Gidian was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma in her right leg just before she turned 4. On a trip to the beach, Gidian began grumbling about pain in her knee, says her mother, Ronda Holbrook.

"Gidian was not a complainer," her mother says. "We took her for X-rays, and I could tell by the technician's face that it wasn't good."

She learned her daughter had cancer by cell phone while sitting in a Pizza Hut.

Quickly, she and her husband, Randy, an engineering manager at Lockheed Martin, became lay experts on Ewing's sarcoma, a malignant bone tumor affecting children.

Physicians removed most of the bone in Gidian's leg - leaving the skin and muscles intact - and replaced it with a prosthetic device. Because children continue to grow, the family knew the device would have to be lengthened periodically by surgery to keep up with the growth of her other leg.

Letson has been working to improve prosthetics for children since 1995.

"We had to figure out how to get an expandable prosthesis," he says. "In the traditional way, we had to mechanically lengthen it, meaning big surgeries with a lot of possible complications."

During a presentation on prostheses a few years ago at a conference in Rio de Janeiro, a technician from England approached him with the idea of using magnets to lengthen the device without surgery.

"It was wonderful technology," Letson says.

Although Letson works at Moffitt, the procedure is done at the nearby All Children's Specialty Care clinic in Tampa. This is the only facility offering it nationally, although Letson will return soon to Harvard University, where he completed a fellowship in 1992, to describe the innovation for physicians there.

Gidian had surgery in February that placed a prosthetic with a bendable knee into her leg. The device has a telescoping, extending mechanism connected to a magnet.

Once a month, Gidian travels from her home in Navarre to Tampa, where she places her leg inside a coil with a rotating magnetic field. It captures the magnet in the leg, causing the magnet to rotate and extend the prosthesis by 3 or 4 millimeters at a time.

Near the end of the procedure, some pain shows on her face, largely due to the stretching of the scar tissue.

Her cancer is in remission; because it was in her knee and bending it hurt, it was discovered early, her mother says. Now, most classmates don't realize Gidian has any problems until she begins limping when she's due for another treatment.

Her doctors cleared the straight-A student recently for the golf and swim teams at school.

But on this day, with one pain pill and a boost down from the exam table, it's Mickey and Minnie and the fastest, tallest roller coasters Disney has to offer - on her own two feet, on legs that match and move in sync.

Reporter Donna Koehn can be reached at (813) 259-8264.

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