Rome family gets help getting gait trainer for toddler thanks to Cedartown Home Depot, Cooper Medical Supply donations
A special moment happened for a family from Rome here in Cedartown over the weekend, and a toddler is getting some help in learning to walk thanks to a donation that was completely unexpected.
This past weekend at the Cedartown Home Depot, the Foster family was invited to come check out a new piece of equipment for Gordy Foster to use in helping him with the physical therapy he needs to learn how to walk. The employees at Home Depot rolled out the orange carpet for Gordy with a celebration on Saturday, with balloon arches and a crowd gathered to show the toddler and his parents his new gait trainer.
His mom Jamie Landers Foster was not only completely surprised at how quickly this all came about, but also at the generosity of two organizations who were previously complete strangers, and are now the best of friends.
Everyone is clapping and excited. Gordy is enthralled by the new trainer. The store manager plays peek-a-boo with the toddler.
It’s a moment made for a Hallmark movie, but one that came to be because of something that Gordy and his parents had no control over.
Broken hearts can be mended
First, let’s explain Gordy’s situation.
Even before Gordy’s story fully began on March 13, 2021, his parents knew there was a potential for issues with their son upon birth. They found out during an ultrasound that Gordy potentially had a hole in his heart. Jamie sat in the exam room and heard the news from the doctor while she was alone and her husband was waiting for her in the parking lot amid the depths of the first year of the pandemic.
She worried she would get something wrong when repeating the news to Bill when she returned to the car emotionally distraught.
They kept an eye on the potential defect, but Gordy was an early arrival.
Jamie was at work on March 13, 2021 as a branch manager for a bank when her water broke. Fellow workers thought she was just having normal pregnancy issues with the unborn child pressing on her bladder. She mentioned what happened to Bill, and they decided as a precaution to go to the emergency room.
“We were on the way in the car and talking about where we wanted to eat that night,” she said. “I remember we were talking about going to McDonald’s.”
Bill chimed in and reminded her it was Outback Steakhouse.
“Regardless of where we were going to go, we never made it,” she added.
Arriving eight weeks earlier than expected, medical professionals immediately got to work in trying to ensure that Gordy stayed alive. He was transferred to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and three weeks into life he was already under the knife for his first repair of the hole in his heart. Gordy’s heart at this time was the size of a walnut.
“We thought it was going to be one surgery, patch the hole and done,” Bill said. “That’s not what happened.”
After coming into the world under cardiac arrest, the surgical team at CHOA found his heart wasn’t repairable in the normal way. He needed a pulmonary artery band to help keep him alive.
Gordy it turned required the second surgery to allow his heart to pump one way. Usually a heartbeat comes in two motions, since it acts as a dual-pump system moving the blood and oxygen around the body. Gordy’s heart problems required the surgeons to close off one of the pumps and force his heart to pump one way.
This second surgery called the Glenn procedure will require a third when he turns three to fix the rest of the issues with his heart.
“It’s so fascinating to me: he had a surgery at three weeks old, three months old and will need one when he’s three years old,” Jamie said.
It could be synchronicity at work in the world, or complete coincidence. What happened next might make a believer for those who doubt the strings of fate tangling together.
Gordy’s Wheels
Obviously, with the surgeries he’s had and one more he’ll need, Gordy hasn’t grown up the normal way a baby becomes a toddler. Medical issues have caused him to have issues getting his left arm and right leg to work correctly, so when he learned to crawl it was in a diagonal.
He goes to a lot of different therapists throughout the week, but the physical therapist who wants to get him walking noted to Jamie in recent weeks she believed he would benefit from having a gait trainer.
“The therapists say the goal is to strengthen his core,” Jamie said. “So she asked if we could find him a gait trainer somehow… She told me that he’s been working so hard to develop on his own, but he’s just not there yet.”
Jamie began making calls to anyone she could think of to help, and so did his therapist.
A gait trainer is essentially what you’d think: a fancy walker that allows for those who are having to learn to walk (or walk again) find their footing with the help of wheels and in the case of Gordy, a strap in seat he can stand and sit in at the same time.
These have to be tailored to the person, so they aren’t cheap. Say, $3,000 to $4,000 a pop not cheap.
“There was no way we could afford to buy one,” Jamie said. “We thought maybe we could rent one, but hadn’t found anything yet.”
She kept searching for resources, and eventually her contacts somehow connected her with Cathy Ensley at the Home Depot here in Cedartown. Jamie said they had helped a young boy in a similar situation previously and still had the plans, and needed the measurements to cut the PVC to the right size for Gordy.
They asked for nothing in return, and said they would have it ready soon. Jamie couldn’t believe her ears. She said they “would love to do it again for Gordy.” Two days later, Jamie got a call that everything was ready.
“I was thinking this was going to be a multi-month process,” she said. “I was shocked it was ready so soon.”
How did this all work out so well?
Employees who volunteered to help build Gordy’s gait trainer sat down and figured out everything that would be needed, and went over to Cooper Medical Supply to grab the wheels they would need for the bottom of the trainer. They can roll forward, but not backward – an important piece for Gordy to be able to learn to walk and not lose forward momentum when trying to find his footing.
While purchasing the specialty wheels, one of the employees explained why they were needed. Cooper Medical Supply happened to have the gait trainer they needed right in the store, and Jamie explained they decided on the spot to donate it for the cause to get Gordy walking.
The employees made the needed alterations, and voila! Gordy’s Wheels were born.
The big reveal came over the weekend when Gordy and his parents were invited to the Cedartown Home Depot to pick up the gait trainer, with no idea they were getting a much better upgrade than expected.
“We have never felt so celebrated,” Jamie said. “Gordy saw it and was immediately so excited. They got every last detail right, even with the Gordy’s wheels sign.”
She said the whole of her family is thankful for the level of support that was shown to Gordy.
Even better: Gordy is already getting used to the new gait trainer. He’s taken his first 50 steps since it was donated to him over the weekend.
“To grasp that level of generosity from complete strangers is just unbelievable,” Jamie added. “To know what level of kindness is out there… These are strangers who have turned into friends in just a single day.”
Gordy’s story won’t end here. He still has a long way to go with more therapy sessions, another surgery coming up in over a year’s time, and many more years of healing.
The best news of all out of this story? Gordy will go on to live a long and happy life. And while he might not remember this early part of his life, he’s already touched so many that they won’t let him forget when he’s older.
