Living with "Beini"

The article was published in the German magazine HANDICAP, issue 4/2005. For more information: www.handicap.de.

01/02/2006

Gunther Belitz visited a family with a leg amputated child and experienced a lot of normality.

Daniel and Nicolas Peier battle outside the house and they really get into this. Nicolas takes Daniel into the stranglehold, pushes him away and falls hard on the bottom. "He always beats me with his leg”, says Nicolas to his mum who pays attention that the boy's playing doesn't get to wild. But after a short time, the identical twins are bosom buddies again. It is owing to Daniel that the seven year olds are hardly to differ although he moves through life with a lower leg prosthesis. He calls it "Beini” (which means "little leg”) and he is right because this is a much nicer word.

"Daniel's leg was already clamped off in womb because of a strangulation mark and it had to be amputated directly after birth. At the first moment, to us, it was like a black hole”, reports Edith Peier. "I would had wished to get in touch with parents who are in similar situations”, adds her husband Andreas. "But we were absolutely on our own”, his wife says. Today both would feel up to contact parents to help them by themselves. "I've become more self-confident during the last years because I always had to fight for Daniel's prosthesis supply”, says Edith Peier. She also mentions a quarrel with the medical attendance of the health insurance institutions. Finally, they have always been cooperative. The committed woman describes the inadequate orthopaedic technology as an obvious offence: "Due to an open screw in the shaft, Daniel got a bad pressure sore and his liner was badly shacking at the stump.” Since Daniel is still growing, they anyway spend a lot of time in hospitals and medical centres to adapt the prostheses. Therefore, they can do without additional trade defects.

She rather spends time with her two little roughnecks who keep her on her toes: "Don't play football in the living room, you've destroyed enough already.” Nicolas does a lot of little things for Daniel and sometimes picks his things from the floor. Both started school in September and are classmates. "Now it is time hat they get their own room”, said Edith Peier.

The handicap is quite normal for Daniel because he does not know anything else. Once in nursery school, a child told him: "Well, you and your wooden leg!” He was so angry that he did not want to go to nursery school any longer. But then a nursery teacher explained what was going on with the prosthesis and the children were allowed to touch Daniel's "Beini”. Today the boy makes jokes about himself and his amputation: One day "Beini” had to be repaired and he had to go to school without it. Daniel showed off before his friends: "I can jump faster than you, and I have got only one leg!”

He removes "Beini” while playing with lego and matchbox cars because it is more comfortable. "If he can't do something, he searches for another solution”, Edith Peier aptly remarks.

What Daniel experienced in a rehab in the Clinic Enzensberg in Hopfen am See was more important to him. There he learned jumping on the trampoline, even with a ball in his hands, and he saw children with similar handicaps and realized that he is not alone with his leg. Today, during the sports lessons and in the schoolyard he rans and grapples like the other kids. On his soap box which grandpa built, he and Nicolas drive down the slope to the garden. The parents are not anxious: "If the prosthesis breaks, it just breaks”, says Edith Peier. "And the doctors also say: Daniel shall behave like other kids.”