Doctors build teenager new leg from stump he was born with

Teenager Michael Gays was walking tall yesterday after doctors built him a new leg from the stump he was born with. The medics gradually "stretched" the right limb by nine inches as brave Michael endured 22 operations and years of pain. But now the 19-year-old is a strapping 6ft 1in with two legs of the same length.

He walked unaided for the first time yesterday after a plaster cast was taken off — and said: "I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life."



Michael’s shrivelled leg was twisted backwards at birth. He had no ankle or fibula — the bone behind the shinbone — and just three toes. As the rest of his body grew, the difference in his legs became huge.

His parents were told he could either live in a wheelchair or endure the stretching. They chose the latter. But it wasn’t easy for Michael, of Brampton, Cambs. He has been in hospital every year of his life.



And on three occasions — in 1997, 2000 and 2007 — he had his shinbone broken and pulled apart in one or two places. His leg was then placed in a cage with metal spikes drilled into the bone. Four times a day Michael turned screws to pull the bone a millimetre apart.

It then gradually knitted together, lengthening as it healed. And now the new long shinbone is able to take the strain of the missing fibula. Michael also had surgery to lengthen tendons and reconstruct his foot.