The Shadow
Yes, you read the headline correctly. Clifton Forge resident, Selena Bailey —nearly 22 years old— has recently purchased her very first pair of shoes.
Bailey suffers from right spastic hemiplegia, a type of cerebral palsy which only affects the right side of the body.
During childhood, Selena Bailey was a patient at Shriner’s Hospital for Children in Greenville, South Carolina where she received three surgeries: two on her right leg to help with walking and one on her right arm to straighten the wrist to make life just a little easier.
When Bailey began walking —a feat her first pediatrician never anticipated— it was quickly noticed by her parents and doctors that her right leg was slightly shorter than her left. As such, Shriner’s began making specially-made shoes for Miss Bailey.
Upon aging out of Shriner’s, Bailey was then referred to the University of Virginia (UVA) hospital where she has been treated ever since. In all those years at both hospitals, Bailey’s shoes were always chosen for her.
However, her appointment on January 8 would be much different, as Bailey and her mother, Jennifer Bailey, learned she now had the option to pick out her own shoes and have the lift put on, rather than getting cast for special-made shoes that would be picked out for her. Selena Bailey chose the first option after 21 years of never being given the choice to select her own shoes.
“Growing up, I always wondered what it would be like,” Selena Bailey said of her first trip shoe shopping. “I have always been grateful to the ones who took the time to make shoes for me to help me, but I was always a little bit jealous because a lot of people can go to the store, look for a pair of shoes, and buy whatever they like. I never had that choice.”
“It’s a humbling thing,” her mother, Jennifer Bailey said, “when you see your grown child clutching onto a pair of shoes and weeping. It took everything in me not to break down with her, but that was her moment and I didn’t want to take it away from her… Selena reminded me not to ever take the little things for granted. Not even a pair of shoes.”
