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All Victoria Komada wanted was a pair of pink shoes. |
Two years ago she faced losing both her legs and life as a double amputee. |
She wasn't able to wear shoes as both legs were affected by a one in a million congenital deformity. |
This week, three year-old Victoria arrived back home in Norwich after miracle surgery which has allowed her to walk for the first time. |
The price her family paid was months of pain, tears and poverty. But their determination to save their daughter's legs led to an exceptional £180,000 raised for her treatment. |
While the NHS insisted a double amputation was the only option, a surgeon in America promised the family Victoria would walk with her own legs. |
The journey was brutal and expensive, but Victoria can now look forward to normality. |
Nine days after arriving at the Paley Institute in Florida last July, parents Dariusz and Marzena had to decide whether to amputate her right leg. |
During a gruelling nine hour operation Victoria's right leg was amputated above the knee and pins inserted in her left leg before a fixator was attached. |
Over the next seven months Dariusz and Marzena had to twist six individual screws a few millimetres each day to coax the bones excruciatingly into place. |
The pain and discomfort from the operation lasted weeks. |
“One day I was thinking I wanted to pack our stuff and come back home. We weren't eating or sleeping properly and there was so much stress with Victoria. |
The second operation came in November, as bones in Victoria's left leg were fused together. Wires were inserted to strengthen her leg and prepare her to walk unaided. |
Within just two days, the three-year-old amazed physios by taking her first steps. |
Her progress was so astonishing she has returned home a month early. |
“We couldn't believe how strong she was,” said Ms Drusewicz. |
“They removed her cast and she started walking that same day. They said that has never happened before. They said she is the best they have seen. |
“We were so happy when she took the first steps we started crying. We were on the way to the car and she said 'Mummy, I will show you something'. |
The family had a solid support network at Quantum House, making friends with families going through the same ordeal. |
“We all carried each other through it,” said Mr Komada, 41. |
“I still do not believe it. To go to Florida was the best decision. |
The miracle for Victoria was only made possible with the generosity of communities in Norwich and Szezcin, the family's old home in Poland. |
Mr Komada's brother continued paying his wages while they were abroad, allowing the family to keep paying rent on their Norwich flat. |
Victoria, meanwhile, will start school in September with some stories to tell. |
“She has made lots of friends and now she is finally speaking English,” said Ms Drusewicz. “I am still angry about the amputation and ask why she has lost the leg. |
“That is still hard to take but she is walking and that is a good thing. |
“Dr Paley said she is going to walk from the very beginning. He wasn't lying. |
“Now she is going to be able to walk and run, and do everything like a normal girl. |
Mr Komada added: “I am so happy. We have come home, and we can enjoy life now. |
“Now she is normal and she can do everything she wants. |
Fayetteville's East Hall Recording has been a slow build. |
'PERFECT IS BORING': Delia the cat and Chris Moore's East Hall Recording studio. |
There's a secret spot stashed off of a loping, scenic road on the edge of Fayetteville. An anemic gray wooden building that sits aside a wet dirt spur of road and behind a shaggy gate of hickory trees is mysterious enough to make you reckon it's hiding something really cool, possibly magical, inside. It's a regional ho... |
Inside, surrounded by 40-year old Ampeg bass cabs, Odyssey Arp synths and a newly restored 1970 Ludwig drum kit, the red-haired and squoosh-faced master of the studio dawdles, indifferent to spending another day in this arsenal of gear-head gold. But we're not here to talk to Delia the cat; we're here to talk to her hu... |
"The studio started back in the early '90s on that," Moore said, pointing at a Tascam recorder, "in my door room at East Hall in Hendrix College." The quarter-century history of East Hall Recording has steadily leveled up from dorm room to bedroom to garage to "half my house ... but it's always kept the vibe of a bedro... |
But enough about vibes; what about details? Moore tracks the band to tape through the definitive tape machine, a two-inch, 24-track Mara Machines workhorse with "Perfect Is Boring" lettered onto its wooden faceplate. That business gets transferred into ProTools to splice and overdub before bouncing back to analog to mi... |
"I like the workflow. We're not staring at a computer screen. It forces everyone to listen to what they're recording instead of looking at it. When we're on tape, we're not going to do edits immediately. We're not going to punch in in the middle of a guitar solo. We're focusing on full takes of the full band playing to... |
The central nervous system of the operation is Moore's latest and largest addition to the ongoing East Hall Recordings project: a 1995 Jade Soundtracs console. Forty-eight channels, 96 inputs, all manner of dynamics, compressors and gates, and more knobs, buttons and sliders than anything I've ever seen on one piece of... |
"I decided a few years ago that this was the board that I wanted because it worked perfectly in the workflow I had going and the workflow I wanted to get to. So I watched for it. And in March, this thing showed up for sale in Houston. So, the next day I rented a U-Haul cargo van that was six inches longer than this boa... |
After a few months of refurbishing and rehabilitating the board to its full power with direct guidance and dead stock parts from one of Jade's designers in the U.K., it's sitting large and in charge in Moore's control room, where it captures some of the best music in Northwest Arkansas ... when not being used as a warm... |
27 years of the HSDFF! 26 letters in the alphabet! You get the gist! We don't have much space, so let's go. |
"my angel, my king, my universe. 8 years without you feels like a lifetime," the star wrote. |
June 26 (UPI) -- Paris Jackson paid tribute to late dad Michael Jackson on the eighth anniversary of his death. |
The 19-year-old aspiring actress said in an Instagram post Sunday that it "feels like a lifetime" has passed since the singer died at age 50 in 2009. |
"my angel, my king, my universe. 8 years without you feels like a lifetime," she captioned a fan-altered photo of herself with her dad. |
Paris also remembered Michael by getting a new tattoo in his honor Friday. She had the word "AppleHead" -- a term of endearment for Michael -- inked in cursive on the top of her left foot. |
"with every step i take, you lift my foot and guide me forward. love you," the star wrote. |
Paris is the daughter of Michael and his second wife, Debbie Rowe, and has several other tattoo tributes to her dad. Michael also fathered two sons: Prince Jackson, 20, and Blanket Jackson, 15. |
"When I was a kid, I was with my dad and my two brothers," Paris recalled in the April issue of Harper's Bazaar. "Growing up, I was treated as the favorite because I was the only girl. I was the princess; I was perfect in my dad's eyes." |
"The first 12 years of my life I was homeschooled," she added. "Which means that the only interactions I'd ever had were with family members or other adults." |
my angel, my king, my universe. 8 years without you feels like a lifetime. |
Paris made her acting debut on the Fox series Star in March, and will appear in the new film Gringo with David Oyelowo, Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried. The movie opens in theaters March 9, 2018. |
With its portrayals of diverse, powerful women, Signature Move manages to be political while also sweet, funny, and romantic. |
Signature Move is an intercultural lesbian wrestling rom-com — and what’s not to love about that? — but it’s also a movie that makes a political statement without being overtly political. |
When the film was in post-production in the fall of 2016, “we optimistically believed we would be telling this story in the time of the first female president,” says director Jennifer Reeder. |
Well, things didn’t quite turn out that way. When the results were in, Reeder says, “it was deflating for about 90 seconds, but then we realized we had this amazing film,” which the director calls a “secret weapon” in the resistance to Donald Trump. |
Signature Move, a film festival favorite that begins a Los Angeles theatrical run today and soon will be available via Amazon Prime and video on demand, features many populations Trump has tried to marginalize — women, LGBT people, Muslims, immigrants, and Mexican-Americans. |
Mirza, who wrote the screenplay with Lisa Donato, plays Zaynab, a Chicago-based Pakistani-American immigration lawyer who wrestles for exercise and “existential reasons — immigration and codependency,” as the character says in the film, with one of her clients as trainer. She shares a home with her widowed mother, Parv... |
Zaynab doesn’t want a husband — she’s a lesbian. She’s not exactly out to her mother, which becomes an issue with her new girlfriend, Alma (Sari Sanchez), an exuberant bookstore owner who’s totally out to her Mexican-American family, including her mother, Rosa (Charin Alvarez), a former competitive wrestler. |
In its sweet, funny, romantic way, the film explores how coming — and being — out differs from culture to culture and, indeed, from family to family, in addition to showing cross-cultural commonalities. It also portrays empowered women — the cast is largely female — and the vibrant South Asian and Mexican communities o... |
The concept of the dramatic coming-out monologue is very Western, says Mirza, adding that in a lot of families in any culture, there isn’t necessarily one big coming-out moment. “Some people take their time and come out slowly,” she says, and everyone has their own path. She seeks tot make the point, she says, that the... |
Mirza has much in common with Zaynab, but the film is not autobiographical, “but it’s definitely inspired by my real life,” she says. “I’m a Pakistani Muslim lesbian who fell in love with a Mexican-American woman in the city of Chicago one beautiful summer.” The woman remains one of her best friends, says Mirza, who’s ... |
But for one thing, she had never wrestled, she says. The wrestling in the film, complete with luchador masks, was inspired by her appearance on a Chicago late-night comedy show alongside a female pro wrestler, who performed her signature move — the finishing move of the match — on the show’s host. “It was so fascinatin... |
“I know I’m deeply impacted by my mother, and I think that’s something really beautiful to share,” she says. Likewise beautiful, she says, was working with Azmi, a veteran of more than 150 films, including the groundbreaking 1996 lesbian romance Fire, in addition to extensive theater and activist work. |
“Shabana’s instincts are just extraordinary,” adds Reeder, noting that Azmi and Mirza would sometimes play off each other and come up with improvised scenes, some of which made it into the film. |
The Signature Move set was full of diverse and talented people, Reeder says, and Azmi remarked that it was the first time she’d been on a set with so many women. The production team was also careful to assure that the movie was cast with ethnically appropriate actors and that it was culturally respectful and authentic.... |
And the little indie film has done well. It won the Grand Jury Prize last year at Los Angeles’s Outfest, and it has been honored at many other festivals, where it’s played to “packed houses of rowdy women ready for a lesbian wrestling rom-com,” Reeder says. It’s had theatrical runs in Chicago and New York before coming... |
Mirza and Reeder, both making their feature film debuts with Signature Move, say they hope audiences see themselves in the movie, and the feedback indicates that this is the case. Mirza says many people have told her they’ve never seen themselves on the screen until viewing Signature Move, while people from a variety o... |
Signature Move opens today at Laemmle’s Music Hall in Beverly Hills. It will be available via video on demand (iTunes, Amazon Instant, and GooglePlay) beginning Tuesday and Amazon Prime as of Thursday. Visti the website here and watch the trailer below. |
Arsenal can challenge for next season's Premier League title if they complement their free-flowing football with the steel to win when not at their best, says manager Arsene Wenger. |
The Gunners, who last won the title in 2003-04, are chasing second place this season and host Swansea on Monday, having won nine of their last 10 games. |
"You cannot play 38 games in the same convincing style," said Wenger. |
"You need balance so if you are not at a level of fluency you can still win." |
The Frenchman believes he has his central defensive options in place for next season and will not be looking to sign anyone in that position for next season. |
"Four is enough," said Wenger, referring to Laurent Koscielny, Per Mertesacker, Calum Chambers and Gabriel - who Wenger added will be "a great central defender" - while he also has Mathieu Debuchy and Nacho Monreal who can "play there". |
Arsenal lost the reverse fixture in November - conceding twice in the last 15 minutes after Alexis Sanchez had put them ahead - and 20-year-old Chambers, playing at right back, was given a torrid time by Swansea's Jefferson Montero. |
Wenger said: "Callum had some difficult games, but that's part of gaining experience and the learning process. Everybody goes through that. |
"When they come out of it, they are stronger. He analyses well what happens and I think he will learn and come out stronger." |
Karen Bankston's tenure at the top of the Child Poverty Collaborative lasted just seven months, but her contributions could have a long-term effect on its attempt to move 10,000 Hamilton County children out of poverty. |
"Karen brought us to a place of reality," said Pastor Ennis Tait, of Avondale's Church of the Living God, one of the collaborative's co-chairs. "She helped to give us insight if a strategy was doable and realistic." |
Bankston, 63, a clinical professor in the Ph.D. program at the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing, will remain with the collaborative as a consultant through December. Her focus will be the building of a database. |
Her reason for resigning had to do with a hospitalization in June. |
"I had a health scare that afforded me an opportunity to reflect on my purpose," she told The Enquirer. "Because of that scare, I decided to step down to do the kind of work that will help me focus on strategies that will get people in poverty on the path to economic self-sufficiency and inclusion." |
In a July meeting with The Enquirer editorial board, shortly after she was released from the hospital, Bankston discussed the need for data collection. |
"Right now, we don't know what really works," she said. "We don't know where the gaps are in our system because nobody has done a comprehensive assessment." |
Bankston expressed frustration at the editorial board meeting with social service agencies, saying they are doing the work they are paid to perform but that they are failing to get at the underlying problem. |
"We are managing poverty," she said. "We've not been reducing poverty." |
Business, community, religious, nonprofit and government leaders founded the collaborative in late 2015 with the goal to significantly reduce child poverty in the county. |
Census estimates for 2017 showed 44.6 percent of children in the city of Cincinnati, or about 28,800 individual children, live below the federal poverty level. |
The rate for children under 5 years of age for 2012-2016 was 45.6 percent. |
Last fall, Gary "Doc" Huffman, United Way of Greater Cincinnati Campaign chair, said Cincinnati has the sixth-highest child poverty rate in the nation. |
The collaborative's goal to move 10,000 children and 5,000 families out of poverty in the next five years might need to be tempered because of the difficult nature of the work, Bankston said. |
Diamondbacks third baseman Jake Lamb said defense always came easy for him – until it didn’t. |
For years, defense had always come naturally to Jake Lamb. Coming up through the minors and into his first seasons in the majors, the Diamondbacks’ third baseman was generally regarded as a solid – and potentially above-average – defender. |
But after consecutive below-average years in the field, Lamb has adopted a new approach to that side of the game. It seems to be working. |
Lamb is still not a perfect defender. He probably won’t be wresting the National League Gold Glove Award away from the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado. |
But he’s appeared more reliable on routine plays, his throws have been more consistent and it seems like he’s making standout plays more often. He made one to end the seventh inning on Monday, lunging to field a sharply hit ball by Marcell Ozuna on the backhand before throwing a strike across the diamond. |
The numbers support the improvement. Lamb has made only two errors in 38 games, and advanced metrics view him as a positive defender for the first time since 2015. For this, he credits work he put in with third base/infield coach Tony Perezchica, who challenged him to put a higher priority on defense. |
In Perezchica’s eyes, Lamb always has worked hard. He just hasn’t handled his defensive reps with the same level of intensity as this year. Perezchica said he’s watched drills run by the game’s best defensive gurus – coaches like the Cubs’ Brian Butterfield and the Marlins’ Perry Hill – and noticed the focus they deman... |
Lamb has taken notice. When doing pregame work in years past, he would catch the ball and throw it, and while he might not have made obvious mistakes, his feet or glove might not have been in the proper position. Now, he said, his attention to detail is better. |
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