A Child Frozen in Time
Sara James, NBC News
MSNBC
Baltimore, Maryland (US):
Watching your children grow up is one of the pleasures of being a parent— and for Howard and Melanie Greenberg, who live in suburban Baltimore with their four daughters, the milestones and memories are countless.
Brooke is the third of the Greenberg’s children."She giggles, she laughs, she recognizes her mother and her father, and she loves to be tickled. She loves her sisters," says Melanie. It all sounds rather ordinary, but for Brooke, things were never quite typical— even from the beginning when Melanie was pregnant with her.
"They checked for growth size every month. One month she would be fine, one month she would just stop and play catch up," recalls Melanie."Brooke was a little on the small side, but nothing abnormal," says dad Howard. "I mean you couldn’t really tell until you witnessed the birth and you saw Brooke."Melanie and Howard first saw Brooke sooner than expected. She arrived one month early and weighed only 4 lbs. She was born with a problem with her hips— a rare condition called anterior hip dislocation.
"Her hips were dislocated from where they normally would be," says Dr. Lawrence Pakula, Brooke's pediatrician. "Hers were pushing forward and put her legs in a very awkward position."Very early in her life, Brooke had to have surgery, be put in casts and lie on her back with her feet up in the air. "The hope is that this would give her much better function," says Pakula.At this point, Howard and Melanie still thought they were going to have a normal child.However, when Brooke was about a year old, Howard and Melanie grew more concerned. Now the worry was not Brooke’s hips, but why Brooke remained about the size of a 6-month-old. While their other daughters were growing, maturing, Brooke seemed to be frozen in time. "She really was not growing to the rate that she should have been growing," says Howard. "I remember the doctor saying that when Brooke enters say 4th grade she’ll be like at the first grade level. We could live with that, we had no problem with that. We really did not know the road we were about to take with Brooke.
"It was a road, that over the next few years, took the Greebergs to specialist after specialist in search of answers... in search of anything."They [the specialists] just said she’ll catch up. Then we went to the nutritionist, the endocrinlogoist. We tried the growth hormone," says Melanie.There was absolutely zero change.
"I mean she did not put on an ounce or she did not grow an inch," says Howard. "That’s when I knew there was a problem."When you look at photographs of Brooke, she appears virtually unchanged. Even her mother has trouble sometimes recognizing how old Brooke is in snapshots. About four years ago, when "Dateline" first met Brooke, she was still the size of a six month old, weighing just 13 lbs. , 27 inches long. And remarkably, Tiny Brooke was 8 years old. The family still had no explanation.
Oct 24, 2005
Sara James, NBC News
MSNBC
Baltimore, Maryland (US):
Watching your children grow up is one of the pleasures of being a parent— and for Howard and Melanie Greenberg, who live in suburban Baltimore with their four daughters, the milestones and memories are countless.
Brooke is the third of the Greenberg’s children."She giggles, she laughs, she recognizes her mother and her father, and she loves to be tickled. She loves her sisters," says Melanie. It all sounds rather ordinary, but for Brooke, things were never quite typical— even from the beginning when Melanie was pregnant with her.
"They checked for growth size every month. One month she would be fine, one month she would just stop and play catch up," recalls Melanie."Brooke was a little on the small side, but nothing abnormal," says dad Howard. "I mean you couldn’t really tell until you witnessed the birth and you saw Brooke."Melanie and Howard first saw Brooke sooner than expected. She arrived one month early and weighed only 4 lbs. She was born with a problem with her hips— a rare condition called anterior hip dislocation.
"Her hips were dislocated from where they normally would be," says Dr. Lawrence Pakula, Brooke's pediatrician. "Hers were pushing forward and put her legs in a very awkward position."Very early in her life, Brooke had to have surgery, be put in casts and lie on her back with her feet up in the air. "The hope is that this would give her much better function," says Pakula.At this point, Howard and Melanie still thought they were going to have a normal child.However, when Brooke was about a year old, Howard and Melanie grew more concerned. Now the worry was not Brooke’s hips, but why Brooke remained about the size of a 6-month-old. While their other daughters were growing, maturing, Brooke seemed to be frozen in time. "She really was not growing to the rate that she should have been growing," says Howard. "I remember the doctor saying that when Brooke enters say 4th grade she’ll be like at the first grade level. We could live with that, we had no problem with that. We really did not know the road we were about to take with Brooke.
"It was a road, that over the next few years, took the Greebergs to specialist after specialist in search of answers... in search of anything."They [the specialists] just said she’ll catch up. Then we went to the nutritionist, the endocrinlogoist. We tried the growth hormone," says Melanie.There was absolutely zero change.
"I mean she did not put on an ounce or she did not grow an inch," says Howard. "That’s when I knew there was a problem."When you look at photographs of Brooke, she appears virtually unchanged. Even her mother has trouble sometimes recognizing how old Brooke is in snapshots. About four years ago, when "Dateline" first met Brooke, she was still the size of a six month old, weighing just 13 lbs. , 27 inches long. And remarkably, Tiny Brooke was 8 years old. The family still had no explanation.
Oct 24, 2005
