Brittle bone disease won’t stop Eve Dahl’s smile
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff Writer
Put 5-year-old Eve Dahl in front of a camera, and she’s like most little ladies her age – ready with a smile and a pose and a tip of the chin to signal, “Yeah, I rock this.”
Never mind that Eve poses from a miniature wheelchair with an immobilizer on her right leg.
That’s just scenery.
“It’s our belief that everyone has challenges in life,” said her mother, Deb Dahl. “We got a lot of, ‘oh, we feel so bad for her.
“We try not to let people do too much of that,” she added. “Eve’s a blessing.”
The youngest of five children, Eve was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta – also known as OI, or brittle bone disease.
In the family’s second year of raising awareness in the community for the rare disease, the family convinced Mayor Bob Miller to declare May 4-11 OI Awareness Week in Burlington.
Last year, the Dahls went public with their story, which included child abuse charges being leveled against the family until Eve was finally diagnosed with OI.
Since then, she has worked with her diagnosis, but also had numerous surgeries, many done in Children’s Hospital of Omaha.
The whole family –including Deb and her husband, Lance, and the other four children, Haley (16), Caitlin (14), Cameron (12) and Erin (11) – have rallied around Eve, however.
On April 25, the whole family was present as Eve got a chance to meet the Mayor at the CATHE Center, where she is in the center’s Children’s House school.
Deb said her youngest spent the whole week talking about getting to meet the Mayor.
“She said, ‘I’m going to meet the Mayor of Burlington,” Deb recalled. “’I’ve never met the Mayor of Burlington.’”
Miller presented Eve with a proclamation declaring the week OI Awareness Week – an expansion of OI Awareness Day last year.
Deb said the OI Awareness Foundation wanted to expand the period of awareness to fundraise for a little longer and also to get more attention to the disease.
Whatever the period of time, Eve and her classmates were thrilled to celebrate it last week. The class arrived about 20 minutes before Miller, and spent the time in high spirits, getting the OI Awareness Bracelets from the Dahl family and playing “Hot Potato.”
The bracelets, which read, “Wishbone Day, May 6, Unbreakable Spirit,” are being handed out around Burlington by the family, and also friends of the family.
They include a flyer that explains a little about the disease, including the fact it is a genetic disease that causes bones to break with little trauma, and it is a physical disorder that does not cause intellectual disability.
The only thing, in fact, that was wrong with Eve on that special day was the immobilizer on her right leg. Eve underwent an extensive surgery last summer to place rods in both femurs, a rod in her humerus, and also repair of the top of the femur bone.
She also had another surgery earlier this year to place a plate in her left tibia. That plate migrated, which resulted in more surgery – and Eve using her right leg to support getting to her feet.
The end result? Her right tibia broke about two weeks ago.
“She told me her leg was itching,” said Deb. “A little later, she’s like, ‘Can you take this brace off?’”
Like most of Eve’s broken bones, Deb can only shrug and say, “I have no idea,” though she suspects this fracture came from Eve overcompensating with her right leg as the left healed.
Just the another day in the life of Eve Dahl – but one full of smiles and fun nonetheless.
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