Mia's Story

We adopted our wonderful daughter, Mia, from China.  We requested a child under the age of 3 who had orthpedic needs.  Mia's right foot was a clubfoot and she had no treatment until we brought her home to the U.S.  She was treated with the Ponseti Method starting at the age of 21 months. We originally planned on her having the traditional clubfoot treatment, reconstructive surgery.  After doing much research, we talked to five families, consisting of either adults who had clubfoot surgery themselves or their child had undergone surgery.  All of them said the surgery went well but they also commented that as they got older, they did have pain when they exercised.  One woman commented that she would stand on her "good foot....the non-clubbed foot" since it felt better.   After reading about the Ponseti Method, we learned that adult patients did not experience pain when they were older or when they exercised.

We emailed Dr. Ponseti in Iowa and he was extremely helpful.  We spent five weeks having her foot corrected with 6 castings and one percutaneous tenotomy.  It was definitely a sacrifice to travel to Iowa, but I knew that when she was older I would never second guess our decision to go with the Ponseti method.  Mia's foot was corrected easily and she had no complaints or blisters with the Ponseti/Mitchell foot abduction brace.   We are beyond impressed with the Ponseti Method.  We would recommend it highly to other families, noting that they should use a doctor that follows the method exactly.