‘She’s literally a miracle child.’ 4-year-old girl gets prosthetic leg in time for Christmas

The night before 3-year-old Genasis Davis lost part of her right foot, her mother tried to prepare her for the upcoming surgery.

“I told her, ‘Genasis, tomorrow, you’re going to have your amputation; they’re going to take your little foot, and it’s going to go with God to heaven,” said Tyrisha Toney, a Columbus resident, during a recent interview with the Ledger-Enquirer.

“So, is my little foot going to be OK?” Genasis asked her 25-year-old mother.

“Yes, baby, it’s going to be OK,” Toney replied.

And with that, the brave little girl — born with a birth defect that caused one leg to be shorter than the other — had part of her foot removed the next morning.

The 3-year-old didn’t shed a tear, her mother said.

“We kissed it; we said goodbye to her little foot, said our prayers and everything was fine from there on out,” Toney said of the surgery, which occurred Oct. 5 at the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital in Tampa, Fla.

Now, Genasis has a prosthetic leg that arrived just in time for her fourth birthday (Dec. 19) and Christmas.

But while mother and daughter are hoping for a happy holiday, Toney said Christmas Day will be less festive than previous years.

“I am currently financially unable to provide my daughter with a great and satisfying birthday/Christmas this year,” she wrote in a Holiday Help letter mailed to Ledger-Enquirer. “... The majority of my money goes to bills and the cost of traveling back and forth from here to Tampa, Fla., to the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital. And, now, I’m trying to purchase a car to take (Genasis) to her appointments.”

Toney says her daughter was born with a condition called Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency, a non-hereditary birth defect affecting the growth of a person’s femur, and causing one leg to be shorter than the other.

She remembers learning about five months into her pregnancy that the child she carried would have birth defects.

“The doctors asked if I wanted to abort the baby,” she recalled. “But there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to keep her.”

In 2013, Toney quit her job as a dining hall attendant at Fort Benning because of the high-risk pregnancy.

The baby was due on Christmas Day, which is Toney’s birthday, but she arrived a few days early.

“The day she was born, I had to have a C-section, so I couldn’t get to her until a couple of hours later,” Toney recalled. “When I first saw her, I knew it was going to be real, because by the time I got to her, she came out with sass.

“She gave me a look, like, ‘Where have you been?’”

Doctors had told Toney that the baby also would have Trisomy 18, a chromosome defect associated with medical complications and potentially life-threatening problems early in life. But that never materialized.

“They said she had a hole in her heart, which she didn’t have,” Toney said. “They said her eyes were not fully developed, and there would be something wrong with them, but there wasn’t.”

But Genasis did have a short right leg, with a club foot, Toney said, and she had an extra toe that looked like a thumb.

Seeing her in the hospital, it was love at first sight.

“... The feeling was amazing,” she said. “I think it made me love her even more to know she was different. Her deformity was so cute to me.”

Yet, Genasis faced many challenges as she continued to grow and develop.

“Due to the fact that her legs weren’t the same length, she had to crawl everywhere,” Toney said. “She crawls so fast, it’s amazing.”

At first, when doctors recommended that the leg be amputated, Toney didn’t want to accept it. She consulted with several physicians, and made the decision while visiting the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital in Tampa.

“From the moment I walked in, I knew it was the place, and it would be best to let them do her surgery,” she said.

Toney said she found out later that there’s a Shriner’s temple in Columbus, affiliated with Shriner’s International, a spin-off of the Free Masons. They helped her with transportation to and from Tampa. She also has received support from family and friends.

In August, physicians did the first of two surgeries, stunting the growth of Genasis’s femur and fusing the knee into a thigh bone. In October, half of her right foot was removed.

Toney said surgeons thought Genasis would have to spend five to seven days in the hospital, but she recovered so well they released her the next day.

“She’s in great spirits about it,” said the mother. “She knows what’s going on, and she was excited, even about the amputation. She was very excited that she was going to get a new leg.”

Toney says her daughter, who attends the Head Start run by the Enrichment Services Program, is like a teenager in a baby’s body.

“Genasis is full of personality, loving, caring, very responsible and intelligent for her age,” she said. “She loves to talk, and she can brighten anybody’s day.

“She’s literally a miracle child,” she continued. “After everything she’s been through, and the type of joy she brings, she’s always happy. It’s like she’s been here before in some other lifetime.”

This story was originally published December 24, 2017 at 3:18 AM with the headline "‘She’s literally a miracle child.’ 4-year-old girl gets prosthetic leg in time for Christmas."