One step at a time

At 15 years old, Matthew Hardwick is learning how to walk again. For a teenager who prefers to spend his time on a skateboard, bike, snowboard or playing the drums, it’s a hard transition.

“It’s funny because the people in the neighborhood are so used to seeing him on a longboard or a skateboard or a bike 24 hours a day. He’s just kind of known as the kid that’s always riding something,” said Matthew’s mother, Rhonda. “He was the kind of kid that never came in until it was dark.”

Matthew, a Liberty Park resident and freshman at Vestavia Hills High School, first began to have problems with his legs in middle school. By his first semester of freshman year, Matthew’s legs had grown to project forward from the knee, instead of standing straight. He recalls that it began to hurt badly.

“He would never complain about it, but his friends would tell me he had trouble bending down to get to his locker,” Rhonda said. “He has been amazingly tough and not complained for a minute.”

When they finally went to the hospital for an examination, Matthew recalls watching hospital staff crowd in to see his X-rays, while he still sat in the exam room. He was diagnosed with premature closure of the growth plate below both of his knees, which caused instability and the backward leg growth. Rhonda said it is very rare for that condition to happen in both legs, especially without an injury to cause it.

“No one had ever seen anything like that on two legs,” Rhonda said.

He had to have surgery on Dec. 18, which involved removing both growth plates and part of his lower leg bones, inserting cadaver bones and pins to hold them together. The new and old bones will eventually grow together and Matthew can have the pins removed.

Since he came home right before Christmas, Matthew has graduated from being almost completely immobile, with both legs in a cast, to moving around in a wheelchair with only one foot still in a cast. The first month or so was “terrible,” Matthew said, but he is improving. Nerve damage in his left leg has slowed his recovery, but in February Matthew began swim therapy and standing up regularly.

The first two times Matthew stood up, however, didn’t go so well. Once, at physical therapy he got up from his wheelchair to use parallel bars, then immediately passed out. The second time, he was playing with his puppy, Milo, on the upper story of the Hardwicks’ house. Milo slipped and began to tumble down the stairs and Matthew instinctively tried to catch him.

“I freak out, not realizing these [my legs] were still bad, stood up and then I just collapsed,” Matthew said.

Rhonda recalled hearing the sound of the puppy falling, followed by the much louder thud of her son hitting the floor.

Now he’s much more steady on his feet and is beginning to relearn how to walk. Matthew said at first he walked with his knees bent “like an old man … because I hadn’t flexed my legs in two months, which was weird.”

As Matthew recovers, Rhonda said friends from Vestavia Hills and beyond have helped keep the Hardwicks going. They have had “around the clock” meals delivered to their house, and once a stylist came to color Rhonda’s hair when she couldn’t leave Matthew alone in the house. Matthew is on homebound study for the rest of the semester, but his teachers check in about once a week and sometimes FaceTime with him so he can talk to his classmates.

One night, Rhonda said the high school boys choir showed up carrying get well cards from fellow students.

“I can’t even say enough good things about Vestavia High School and how they’ve handled this, not just from a school point of view but from a personal,” Rhonda said. “We both want to thank every single person we’ve ever known in our entire life.”

Simple things like getting up off the couch no longer seem like they’re no big deal, and a single step can be cause for celebration.

“We are counting our blessings and probably won’t be the same people. After you go through something like this, you really realize how important life is and how fun it is to be able to get up and go outside and run and play,” Rhonda said. “We’ve learned a lot of patience and we’ve learned to take every little, tiny accomplishment and be excited.”

With physical therapy, Matthew is hoping to leave his wheelchair behind and use a walker by summer. He still has a long road before he can even walk independently or remove his leg braces, let alone return to his more active hobbies. To help pass the time until he can get on a board himself, Matthew is attempting to teach Milo to skateboard.

“[Milo] has been the best thing that’s happened,” Rhonda said of the puppy that was Matthew’s Christmas present. “He would sit on the edge of the wheelchair constantly when he was first home.”

The experience of surgery and being homebound has brought the Hardwicks closer together, especially Rhonda and Matthew since they spend so much of their days together. Even once Matthew has healed, Rhonda said this time will be a defining moment for their family.

“We both have a lot of empathy for other people now, more so than I think we’ve ever had. You know, sometimes you think, ‘Oh, that’s not going to happen to me,’ or ‘I’m not going to get sick’ or whatever and then it happens to you. And you think, ‘Wow, people really go through a lot,’” Rhonda said.

And recently, they got a small sign that things are starting to look more like normal. A friend came over, guitar in tow, and helped Matthew down to the basement to pick up his drumsticks for the first time in months.

“Of all the times I’ve screamed, ‘Boys, can you stop? The floor is shaking!’ I was so glad to hear that last night. I’m never going to say that ever again, as long as I live,” Rhonda said. “It was so exciting to hear him play the drums again.”