TORONTO – One North Carolina dad truly went the extra mile to make life easier for his teenage daughter.
Thirteen-year-old Raegan Ford was born with Poland Syndrome, which caused several of the bones in her body to form incorrectly. While the most common symptom of the defect is a loss of some or all of the pectoral muscle, in Ford’s case the disease caused a deformity in her left hand, with only two digits developing.
Raegan’s father Brett Ford has gone out of his way to try and make life easier for his daughter, such as making her custom-fitted gloves to accommodate her left hand.
“My Dad just buys normal gloves and traces my hand,” Raegan told WBTV News in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Brett recently went a step further – actually, several steps – in designing Raegan a prosthetic hand.
But first, he had to buy and assemble the 3D printer he would need to make the hand, a process Ford says took him over 30 hours itself.
“I didn’t really think he would go through with it,” Raegan said of the moment her father texted her with his idea for the hand.
But Brett stuck with it, working through reams of instructions and constant tests to design his daughter a device that would mimic her left hand, complete with all 5 digits.
“It’s just the love of a father to his children, that’s the only reason,” Brett said about his design project. “If you don’t have any children, I can’t explain it.”
The payoff for Brett was when his daughter used the hand to catch a ball – the first time she had ever done so.
“The look on her face when she caught a ball for the first time in 13 years…. My heart smiled,” Brett said.
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