Dateline: June 30, 2005

Shriners Hospitals changed girl's life

By Ashlee Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

Walking up stairs without holding on. Touching your toes. Putting on your own shoes. Riding a bike. Sitting with your legs crossed.

These tasks may seem easy, but they are things that one little girl could never do… until now.

Tristin Miller’s story started on July 19, 1996, when she and her twin sister, Kristin, were born premature with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. They weighed just two pounds, 14 ounces and four pounds, 13 ounces.

Their mother Misti Watson said when the girls were born, Tristin had nothing wrong. She went home after just a week with no problems while her twin sister, Kristin, went home after five days and had to be on oxygen.

“Both girls never seemed to have problems until Kristin began doing things that Tristin couldn’t,” Misti said. “Tristin had a hard time sitting up, and doctors told me it was just because she was so small; but I knew something wasn’t right.”

Both girls suffer from hearing loss and a seizure disorder; but when Tristin was one and a half, she was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, a condition that causes a loss of muscle coordination.

She started visiting the Shriners Hospitals for Children at the age of two. There they put her into bracing and worked with her in physical therapy until she was ready for surgery at the age of eight.

“Before surgery Tristin was given a doll, and the doctors used it to show her exactly what they were going to do,” Misti said.

Tristin’s three-hour surgery was at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Houston on October 27, 2004; and the doctors did eight different procedures on her legs during that one operation.

“After her surgery she got very grouchy and mean for a few days. She kept saying, ‘Help me Mama; help me.’

“I just thought, ‘Why did I do this? Why did I put her through all this pain?’” Misti said. “But after five or six days, Tristin said, ‘I can do this;’ and then I knew she was going to be all right.”

While in the hospital, Tristin enjoyed celebrating Halloween and participated in daily activities.

“She also had a teacher while she was there,” Misti said. “We went to school everyday after therapy.

“We always had something to do. They told us that the kids there aren’t sick; they just have something wrong with them, so they didn’t need to lie around in a bed.”

Tristin spent just three weeks in the hospital and came home with casts from the knees down.

“She used a walker to get around at first, but now she is doing great,” Misti said. “We have a therapist who comes twice a week, and we do stretches with her everyday.

“Right now her therapy is a game to her, but it’s painful some days. The doctors said we are trying to reprogram her brain to walk correctly. She spent eight years walking the wrong way, so now she’s learning to walk all over again the right way.”

Tristin sleeps with a wedge pillow between her legs and knee immobilizers, and during the day she wears braces to protect her muscles; but as soon as her muscles are stronger, she can go without them.

Everything at the Shriners Hospital is personal Misti said.

“They don’t ever forget her,” she said, “and they have several doctors and therapists that do everything they need right there together.”

After returning from Houston, Tristin went right back to school.

“She would cry sometimes, but the kids were great with her,” Misti said. “The kids fought over who got to help her.”

Thanks to the Shriners, Tristin is now off and running. She can walk up the stairs without holding onto the rail, put on her own shoes, touch her toes, ride a bicycle, and sit with her legs crossed.

“She doesn’t see herself different than anyone else,” Misti said. “She loves everybody and doesn’t see that she has ever had a problem.”

Tristin said she loves to read and one day hopes to be a teacher or a doctor.

“I want to help other people,” she said.

Tristin and Kristin will be third graders in the fall, and they are spending their summer playing baseball and wrestling with each other.

“They are very different but also very close,” Misti said.

There are not enough words to describe what the Shriners Hospitals for Children do, Misti said.

“They don’t ask for anything, but just do and do and do,” she said. “We are so appreciative of everything they have done for our family.

“They’re amazing and good hearted, and people don’t realize how they help until you actually see someone up walking around like Tristin is.”

Tristin should not have to have any more surgeries in the future, but she did have to travel to Houston a few weeks ago for Botox injections into her legs after she went through a growth spurt. According to Misti, the entire process of getting Tristin better has been slow and aggravating at times but completely worth everything.

“I have cried myself to sleep many a night over her. You just feel like it’s your fault,” she said. “But seeing her get better made it all ok. The good Lord has taken care of me.”

“And me,” Tristin said. “He’s a good guy.”

Everybody can help Shriners help children 

Twenty-two Shriners Hospitals are Masonic charities and are located throughout North America – 20 in the United States and one each in Mexico and Canada.

Since the first Shriners hospital opened in 1922, about $7 billion have been spent to help 770,000 children at Shriners hospitals. Shiners operate two children’s hospitals in Texas – an orthopedic hospital in Houston and a burn hospital in Galveston.

There is never a charge to the patient, parent, or any third party for any service or medical treatment received at Shriners Hospitals, which accept and treat children under 18 years of age without regard to race, religion, or relationship to a Shriner.

Clarendon’s Al Morrah Shrine Club traditionally supports the hospitals by donating funds raised at the annual Saints’ Roost Celebration barbecue to the Khiva Temple’s travel fund, which pays for transporting children to and from the hospitals.

This year’s barbecue will be held from 11 until the food runs out on Saturday, July 2, at City Park. Tickets are $6.50 each and are available from Henson’s or The Clarendon Enterprise.

For more information about Shiners Hospitals for Children, visit their Web site at www.shinershq.org.