Disabled softball player meets life's challenges

It was a question that broke her heart.

"Robyn doesn't complain, but one night last summer we were sitting in the kitchen and she said to me, 'Mom, why was I born like this?' I just said, 'I wish I knew. You're just going to have to do the best you can with what you've got,"' said Sue Shelton as she watched her daughter play softball for the Highland Rams. "Sometimes you can see others' problems and sometimes you can't. But we've all got them."

It was kindergarten when Robyn first remembers being teased about her prosthetic leg. She said people still make fun of her "all the time," but she doesn't spend a lot of time or energy worrying about what those people think of her. She is too busy trying to find a way to do all of the things she loves — including playing third base for the Highland varsity softball team this year.

"I just shake it off," Robyn said of the stares and name-calling. "I usually don't even say anything. ... It's surprising, but I see lots of kids getting picked on at school. I just don't see why people do it. I don't really get that."

The other thing Robyn doesn't get is special treatment from her softball coach, friends or family. When she tried out for the team, coach Junior Lopati said he didn't even know the infielder had a prosthetic leg.

"I saw her limp a little, but I didn't think anything of it because she was doing everything everyone else did," he said. "I was really surprised when I found out. ... I think everyone's response to it when they see her play is that she is no different than anyone else."

But she is different.

Robyn was born with no fibula and no growth plate at the bottom of her tibula. Her mother said that most children born with her particular birth defect do not have a foot, but Robyn did. That left Sue and Mark Shelton with an agonizing decision to make for their baby daughter.

The Sheltons could undergo multiple surgeries every year in which doctors broke Robyn's leg in several places and then tried to lengthen it, or they could amputate and allow their daughter to wear a prosthetic.

She saw the attempt to stretch her daughter's tiny leg each year as "barbaric."

"I wondered what kind of a life she'd have growing up," said Shelton. "She'd be in traction six weeks of every year, not to mention the pain of recovering."

The Sheltons believed Robyn would have a more normal childhood if they amputated the foot and allowed her to use a prosthetic leg.