Rising Tennis Star Overcomes Birth Injury
August 13th, 2008 Posted in NewsRyan Dimond, of Boca Raton, Florida, suffers from Erb’s palsy, but you wouldn’t know that just by looking at him. He recently reached the semifinals of the Junior Sun & Fun tennis court competition in Pompano Beach, Florida. Though he lost to the eventual champion, he doesn’t feel like he lost anything. To him, he is a winner in life.
Ryan’s left arm was paralyzed during birth. “He had trauma at birth,” Tracie Dimond, Ryan’s mother said. “They wouldn’t do a cesarean. They thought he was 7 pounds and he turned out to be 10 pounds. I pushed for three hours and 40 minutes and it tore the brachial plexus. They did a corkscrew extraction and that led to the fracture to the skull and subgaleal hemorrhage. The nerves were severed.”
At 15 months, Ryan underwent a nerve transfer where doctors cut him from his ankle to the top of his calf in order to use the sensory nerve and put it in his spinal cord. Then, at age 5, Ryan underwent a second surgery to correct his posture and spent six weeks in a full body cast.
Despite the difficult situation, Ryan and his family were determined not to let this disability stop him. After many hours of surgery, and exercising via tennis and swimming, Ryan has been able to regain about 90 percent motion in the arm. “The only handicap he has now is having his father as a coach,” Jim Dimond joked. “It is satisfying that we found a sport he can do even if he does have some limitations.” Ryan practices tennis for about 2 hours a day and takes everything that comes at him in stride. He is very grateful to have the opportunity to recover from a disability that many other children are unable to.
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