The Casts She Was Never Supposed to Kick Off

It’s hard to explain what it feels like when your child does something the specialists once told you would never happen. The same people who gently warned she may never move her legs… well, they probably didn’t picture her launching those same legs hard enough to kick off medical casts like she was proving a point.

It’s very bittersweet. The kind of bittersweet that hits you in two directions at once. On one side, there’s pride so strong it nearly knocks you over. On the other side, there’s the exhaustion of once again picking up the phone to say, “Yep… she’s kicked them off. Again.”

It’s like she’s saying, “Ha, take that,” every time. A quiet rebellion from someone who’s barely out of babyhood, but already rewriting her story on her own terms.

By the time she reached what was supposed to be her final set of casts that needed to stay on for 3 weeks, she’d already had nineteen sets. Nineteen. That’s not a typo. Nineteen rounds of plaster, fiberglass, padding, angles, positions, drying time, tears, settling, and the same conversation over and over: “We’ll just get her through this one.”

And almost every time, she’d decide she had other plans.

The first time she kicked one off, we assumed something went wrong with the fiberglass. The second time, maybe we held her weird. The third time, we realised our daughter had the leg strength of a kid who never got the memo about her “limitations.” After that, it became its own cycle.

Every time a cast slipped, or came clean off, we called Wes. This man deserves a medal. Even when he was working out of his private clinic, even when he had a full schedule, even when it was absolutely not convenient, he made room for her. No sighing. No irritation. No “are you serious?” Just that soft little smirk he does when he sees her half-off cast like, “Yep, that tracks.”

Never once did he make us feel like a nuisance. He just rolled up his sleeves, adjusted her position, and got on with it. That kind of steadiness matters more than most people understand.

Over time, the casting appointments started to smooth out. Faster. Less stressful. It wasn’t that she stopped fighting them. She absolutely did not. It’s that we’d learned how to work as a team. Our circle has gotten small. And honestly, we prefer it that way. When it comes to your child’s body and future mobility, you don’t want a crowd of hands. You want the hands you trust.

With our main casting guy away at times, I stepped in more. Not to play surgeon nothing dramatic like that but to help. Holding her leg. Supporting the right angle. Keeping her calm so the process didn’t drag on. When you’ve been through nineteen casts, you don’t sit back helplessly anymore. You get involved because it actually helps her.

Wes didn’t treat me like an obstacle. He’d show me what to hold, how to position her, when to keep her still. No condescension. No “step aside.” He treated us like part of the team, because in reality, we are. We’re the ones who live this every single day.

And then there’s the emotional whiplash of it all. Because yes, it’s absolutely frustrating when she kicks off a cast that took a whole team to apply. It means another drive. Another appointment. Another round of comforting her while she’s tired, annoyed, or flat-out over it.

But every single time, underneath the frustration is that spark of pride. This little girl who wasn’t meant to move her legs has the power and determination to undo medical-grade fiberglass. She’s not doing it out of mischief. She’s doing it because her body is waking up. Because she’s learning to fight for her own comfort and movement. Because she’s strong in every way they doubted she would be.

It’s messy. It’s tiring. It’s absolutely emotional.

But it also feels like watching her break free of predictions that were never going to define her anyway.

By the nineteenth cast, you’d think we’d be numb to it. We weren’t. Every new set marked progress. Every kicked-off cast marked strength. Every redo marked resilience. And every smirk from Wes reminded us that this wasn’t failure it was growth showing up in the most inconvenient way possible.

Her final casts, the ones meant to stay on for 3 weeks, are different. We held our breath. We hoped. We watch her like hawks every time she wriggled. Because these ones mattered. These ones were the bridge between surgery and the boots-and-bar phase. These ones are the line between “we’re still in casting” and “we’re moving forward.”

And somehow, with nineteen sets behind her, with more determination in her legs than anyone predicted, she keeps them on, so far so good..

Maybe because she is tired. Maybe because they were placed differently. Maybe because her body finally let her rest.

Or maybe she knew. Maybe she felt the shift. Maybe she is ready.

What I know is this, every cast she kicked off is part of her story. Every phone call. Every trip. Every redo. Every sigh. Every laugh. Every “she’s done it again.” Every soft look from Wes. Every tear we wiped. Every angle we held. Every bit of stubborn strength in those legs.

It wasn’t wasted. It wasn’t for nothing. It was her fighting her way forward in the only way she knows how.

And honestly, I’ll take a child who kicks off every cast in the world over a child who never moves at all. Strength, even the inconvenient kind, is still strength.

She was never supposed to move her legs.
Now she kicks off fiberglass casts like it’s nothing.

Tell me that’s not worth every single trip back.