One. Two. Three. Four. She counts her steps. Each one is a milestone. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. She pushes forward. Each stride is a testament that she is okay. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. For English teacher Harrison Lofton’s daughter Bee, walking with her walker is no big deal. For Lofton, it’s everything.
Three years ago, Bee underwent the CuRe trial fetal surgery aimed to cure spina bifida, a birth defect in which a developing baby’s spine doesn’t close or form properly and can cause paralysis and other issues. Now, she’s able to walk—something uncertain she would ever do—and her opportunity knows no bounds.
“The answer I’ve gotten [after Bee started walking] is that Bee is capable of whatever she wants to do, and I don’t think she’ll be limited in a way that can’t be reconciled,” Lofton said. “Whatever Bee wants to do, she’ll be able to do. As her dad, it makes me super happy, that’s the main thing—I want her to be able to do whatever she wants to do.”
When Lofton first found out about Bee’s condition at an ultrasound, he cried and he thought, “at least she can swim.”
“I swam,” Lofton said. “I thought, ‘at least she can do the same sport as me.’”
Even if she couldn’t walk, even if she were to force endless trips to the emergency room after every cold or fever, even if she didn’t get to do everything she wanted to do, at least she could swim. It was one small victory.
When Lofton got to see Bee play, it was another.“Her friends in school would help her sometimes,” Lofton said. “And then they would always take turns helping her, and they were all really excited to help her. It was really cute to see.”
Over the past three years, Bee has worked day in, day out on her movement. From sitting to standing, from kneeling to sitting, from reaching high enough to grab a ball, Bee’s movement has been a series of small setbacks, and small victories.
“When we would go to a doctor’s appointment and she wouldn’t meet certain mobility milestones that are normal for babies, or when I would go to an event for preschool, and all of her classmates would like, be dancing and stuff and she would be on all fours on the floor, that would always make me sad,” Lofton said. “That was always my worry, how is she going to be limited, and then is that going to have a negative effect on her self esteem and on her outlook on life in general?”
After months of little progress in her mobility, Bee gripped her purple walker—adorned with stickers—and did it. She walked, she ran and she continued to laugh when she tumbled over.
“She’s tougher than I thought she’d be,” Bee’s grandfather, Bryan Lofton said. “She’s pretty willful, which I think is going to be an asset for her in the long run. If she gets mad enough to do
something, she’s probably going to do it. So I think that’s a great, great, great quality in a person, is to be able to overcome what’s in front of you.”
Bryan—whom Bee nicknamed Barbón (bearded goat)—believes that after seeing her pass the gate of walking with a walker, he was reassured that she will be on her own someday, doing anything she sets her mind to.
“You just want a wide variety of options and opportunities for her,” Bryan said. “And if she’s able to get herself places, there’s a ton of things in life open up to her. The New York Marathon’s probably not in the cards, but that’s one little thing, right? There’s a whole massive world out there where she could go do great things at whatever she wants.”
Bee continues to improve with her walker, there’s no tumbling, even when she faces a bump in the road—literally or metaphorically. Lofton believes she’s better with a walker than he would be.
“I was talking about it with the physical therapist before she left my house and I cried,” Lofton said. “It was just awesome to see how far she had come, that was definitely something that made me super grateful.”
Bee makes new strides forward often, always holding herself up on those purple handlebars.
“So far with Bee’s life, the [CuRe trial] kind of lived up to its name,” Lofton said. “In the last two years Bee has made really good progress and fairly normal progress as far as babies go. All we deal with is it took her longer to walk and she walks with a walker. She’s just a normal kid. She doesn’t like vegetables. She really likes drawing with chalk. She loves bubbles. She loves the show Bluey.”
