Camp for youths with limb variations additionally helps prepare college students in bodily and occupational remedy

HAMDEN, Conn. — Santino Iamunno was born with out most of his proper hand, and the 11-year-old tends to maintain that hand in his pocket when round new folks, simply to keep away from the questions.

But that’s not one thing he worries about at Camp No Limits, the place all of the younger campers are coping with limb loss or limb variations.

“It feels nice because I don’t have to, like, explain what happened that often,” Santino mentioned. “Because outside of camp, I’ll get a lot of questions like, ‘What happened?’ And I mean, I’ll explain it to them. But here, it’s better here, because I don’t have to.”

Founded in 2004, Camp No Limits holds periods in Maine, Missouri, Maryland, Florida, Idaho, Arizona, Texas, California and a particular one in Connecticut, the place the advisors are bodily and occupational remedy college students at Quinnipiac University, a personal college with about 9,000 undergraduate and graduate college students.

At the four-day program, campers keep within the Quinnipiac dorms, attend bodily remedy periods, study prosthetics and different tools and are taught life hacks reminiscent of the best way to tie their footwear, put their hair in a ponytail or climb stairs. They can also problem themselves bodily with actions reminiscent of studying or relearning the best way to journey a bicycle and making an attempt out sled hockey.

Jeni Rhodes’ 8-year-old daughter Anya misplaced her left leg to most cancers. She mentioned seeing Anya push herself at camp to beat obstacles and expertise pleasure once more has been particular.

PHOTOS: Camp for youths with limb variations additionally helps prepare college students in bodily and occupational remedy

“She was able to get on a bike today and for the first time since her amputation last year,” Rhodes mentioned. “So it’s a big opportunity not only to just be around other people and differences, but also for her to try new things.”

Many of the campers are accompanied by mother and father and siblings who additionally keep in a single day, take part in a number of the actions and create bonds with different households.

Rosanne Keep, of North Wales, Pennsylvania, got here together with her 12-year-old daughter Mariam, who was born with a congenital situation that led to the amputation of her proper foot in January. She mentioned the chance to satisfy different children with limb variations and their households has been good for each her daughter and her.

“There are other kids out there, but depending on what circles you travel in, you just don’t see them that often,” Rosanne Keep mentioned. “So it’s a good opportunity for her to meet some other kids, talk about, you know, what they’re going through, and also just as parents to meet other parents who are facing the same difficulties. It’s just good mentally.”

The camps are staffed with bodily and occupational therapists, prosthetists and grownup amputee mentors.

Quinnipiac’s camp can be a studying expertise for the scholar counselors. It’s the one such partnership Camp No Limits has with a college. And the Quinnipiac camp will get visits every year from prosthetist college students from the University of Hartford, to allow them to additionally each train and study from the youngsters.

“I love that we’re able to do this connection,” mentioned Mary Leighton, a bodily therapist and the camp’s founder and govt director. “When I was in school, we really had a very limited amount of time that was spent discussing amputees or individuals with limb differences.”

The camp expertise is way more than simply the sensible software of what the scholars have been studying within the classroom, mentioned Maria Cusson, a scientific affiliate professor of bodily remedy at Quinnipiac.

“That personal connection, learning the stories of the campers, helping, you know, helping these kids and finding out who they are helps (the counselors) develop as students,” Cusson mentioned. “It is more impactful than you can possibly imagine.”

Occupational remedy scholar Tessa Maloney, one of many camp’s scholar leaders, mentioned she had a profession epiphany whereas working as a counselor. She was watching the camp expertise present when a 16-year-old boy she had been working with took the stage.

With the Olympic theme enjoying within the background, the teenager, who had just lately misplaced most of 1 leg to most cancers, proceeded to climb a flight of stairs. That introduced tears to Tessa’s eyes and satisfied her that she ought to make a profession of serving to children with limb variations.