Hi! My name is Josiah and I am 16 years old now. I am cheerful, feisty and very funny! I love to build legos, create games for us all to play and I have an active imagination. I love my Dad (Shawn), Mom (Dana) and my big sister (Dara) and my brother-in-law (Zack). I was born with a rare combination of lower spinal abnormalities. I have had eight surgeries from the time I was 2-7yrs old. The first four surgeries were orthopedic and done to stabilize the structure of my lower spine and preserve my ability to walk. The fifth and the sixth surgeries were done by my neurosurgeon to address several issues I have going on inside my spinal cord. The seventh one was a frontalectomy (tongue tied- so they clipped my tongue tissue underneath to release my tongue- it's so much better now!). The 8th surgery was to rebuild my left foot that got deformed over several years due to a nerve function complication after my first surgery. For the past while my back has been stable and I haven't had to have any surgeries but the doctors keep a close watch on me to make sure my spine is doing ok while I'm in my most significant growth years. Thank you for praying for me and my family and following along my journey!
If you would like to read more about Josiah's story and the journey we've been on since we found out about his condition, you can read back through all of our journal entries here on Caring Bridge. If you'd like to read about how we found out about his condition after he was born to the age of about two - then go HERE (
http://shawnklinkner.blogspot.com) and read back through the posts. Thank you for caring about Josiah's journey.
