July 26, 2026

Have you ever felt like a bad parent, even when you were doing everything you could?

I know that feeling.

In the fall of 2018, a doctor told me, “I would have operated on your daughter six months ago.”

Hearing that was devastating.

My oldest daughter had been complaining about knee pain for several months. We took her to a specialist in Fairbanks and he said there was nothing wrong.

But I knew there was.

Eventually, we found a specialist in Anchorage, and he saw her, but he said that what she had, she would grow out of.

It’s called Legg-Calve Perthes disease, and what happens is the thigh bone ball that goes into the hip dies.

It is fairly routine and happens a lot, and most of the time, kids just grow out of it. Which is why that specialist said that nothing needed to be done.

But in our situation, Katya didn’t grow out of it. Well, not exactly. Six months later, she did grow out of it, but her femoral head literally grew outside her hip socket, causing excruciating pain.

In the fall of 2018, we miraculously got her in to see a specialist from Shriners Hospital in Spokane who came to do a clinic in Fairbanks.

The doctor looked at her X-rays and couldn’t believe she was walking and happy. But that’s what Katya is, a constant source of happiness. He’d seen this in dozens of patients with Down syndrome and knew exactly what he would have done to fix it.

That night I was heartbroken. I hadn’t done anything wrong, except listen to another specialist. And he hadn’t done anything wrong, either, he just didn’t know that kids with Down syndrome are different.

It still took several months to plan her surgery, but eventually she was flown down to Spokane, and the surgery to fix her leg was going to happen.

Katya’s amazing doctor told us several plans for what he would do to fix her leg, but one of those plans was amputation, which is a very scary thought.

He started working and had to go through plan A, B, C, skip D, and finally landed on plan E, which meant he would reattach her cartilage back to her hip bone in an unorthodox way.

It worked!

Even though Katya had a long hard road ahead of her, she kept her leg, got her hip fixed, and had to be in a wheelchair, then use a walker for about 9 months.

I was a principal at the time, and even though we had great health insurance, Shriners is a place that provides medical services and doesn’t ever even send a bill to the family.

Katya even went on to run the 100 meter dash for her school.

It’s now been 7 years since her surgery, and for the last three, Katya has done a fundraiser for Shriners since they helped her so much.

She still sees them for orthotics and a lift on her shoe, and the whole point is to serve the patient without charge. It’s amazing.

We do this fundraiser as a way to say thank you, and hope that our small gift will help someone else who needs medical attention that they may not get anywhere else!

Today, I’m inviting you to join us.

There are two ways to support the fundraiser.

1. ​Join our virtual 5.1K (Katya’s Birthday is May 1st, so it’s perfect) by buying a race bib (and other swag) from her Shop. All proceeds from the race bibs (minus Shopify fees) and 10% of all other sales goes directly to Shriners.
2. ​Donate directly to Katya’s fundraiser page on Shriners’ web site.

Katya is turning 20 this year, and our goal is to raise $1000 for every year of her life so far—$20,000.

Thank you,

Jethro

PS. The best part of this fundraiser is that Katya goes live on Instagram every night thanking everyone who donated that day. She’ll shout you out by name and probably do something cute.

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PO Box 30161, Spokane, WA 99223
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