4A
NEWS / THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
ANDREAS (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
--effort on our part."
From the time he was adopted and brought to Kansas from his native Greece to college graduation, Andreas can say that he has never been given a free ticket in life, except when he was adopted by a family with five children and embarked on life in America.
Twenty years ago, Chris and Bill Brandenberger traveled nearly 6,000 miles across the Atlantic to Athens, Greece, where they signed paperwork for their sixth child, Andreas. Before leaving for Greece, they carefully chose toys to bring that would not frustrate a 2-year-old boy who had no hands. When they first saw Andreas, he was sitting on the floor neatly stacking pop bottle caps, one on top of the other.
Chris and Bill looked at each other in awe.
"To see that little guy with no arms stacking bottle caps at that age, it was amazing." Chris recalled.
That suitcase full of toys they had carefully selected for Andreas was given away the next day to other families who were adopting babies. Bill, a physician at Watkins Memorial Health Center, told his wife they should never tell him about the toys because they knew he could handle more complex toys.
They got to know Andreas by taking him outside and walking around the beautiful trees and pathways that surrounded the orphanage. Bill would buy Andreas pop and ice cream from the shop across the street. Their first thought was that they could all share one pop because the 2-year-old couldn't handle a whole one.
"Boy, I'll tell you, he had that pop can, and he wasn't sharing that pop with anybody," Chris said. "He could hold onto that pop while getting into a stroller with very little help, not spilling a drop."
--effort on our part."
Growing up in his new home in Baldwin City with five other children, Andreas' phocoemia didn't play a role in how his siblings treated him. If he asked his brothers to get a glass out of the cupboard for him, they would point to a chair and tell him to climb onto it and get it himself.
"We definitely didn't cut him any breaks," his brother Joe said. "There was never really a discussion about that, and we treated him as if there was nothing different about him."
Amanda, Andreas' sister who is closest in age to him, said that family and friends never considered him to be physically disabled or to have a handicap.
After waking up, Andreas begins his daily routine by brushing his teeth. Andreas has had to discover unconventional ways of completing everyday tasks
Andreas never contemplated it either.
"I joke with my friends that I am 'handi-capable'," Andreas said. "There are too many fun things out there that I want to do, and there is no way in hell that I am going to let something like a 'handicap' slow me down."
His parents took the same approach.
"I think kids need to have their bumps and get up on their own," Bill said. "He tended to do that on his own, so it didn't require much
Chris recalls one time when she had M&Ms for the kids, and they all came running into the room with their hands cupped to get their share. Dumping handfuls of the chocolate candies into each child's hands, she went right down the line. When she got to Andreas, M&Ms scattered all over the floor. While his siblings laughed at their mother, Chris immediately said, "Ooh wow, I think you need a cup, Andreas."
Phocomelia is rare enough that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center don't have compiled data on those living with the condition.
Researchers thought phocomelia was possibly caused by thalidomide, a drug that was prescribed in the 1960s to treat anxiety and morning sickness in pregnant women. It was mostly given to women who lived outside of the United States.
Because Andreas is adopted, his family does not know the direct cause of his phocelia.
As Joe recalled, "We had a banister over the stairway in our treestory Victorian-style home, and at one point in time, Will and I got one leg each, and we were hanging him over the balcony."
Living in a family with five siblings who are all older than him, Andreas couldn't hide from the tough love or pranks siblings play.
They still tease him to this day by threatening they'll shake him down for his school lunch money.
While Chris and Bill were inside the house brainstorming how to tweak the handlebars of Andreas' new bicycle to make it easier to ride, his oldest brother Will had other ideas. He knew it was time to put Andreas on a bicycle and push him down the driveway, as Will screamed, "Pedal, brother, pedall" Andreas did.
It didn't stop there.
From then on, the Brandenbergers knew Andreas would always do more than they expected.
"Maybe the bicycle incident was the big awakening for us where we realized he would always be two steps ahead of us," Chris said.
Andreas was a master of his own fate. Life was in his own hands, such as they were or weren't.
Family and close friends of Andreas understood.
His best friend Emery Baughan explained, "If you put limits on what someone can do, then they can never show their full ability, and they are shackled by others' perceptions."
The teachers in Baldwin City learned to take a step back and let him run his own show. He might have asked for extra time to write so that his muscles didn't cramp from
In elementary school, one of his teachers realized that the arduous writing exercise of a young and determined Andreas would run into recess. She quietly patted him on the shoulder and let him know that if he did half of his sentences, she would be satisfied and that he could go out to recess with his classmates. Andreas turned, looked up and said, "I will do what the other children do," and continued squeezing his pencil tightly, guiding it across the 1ined paper.
squeezing the pencil, but his physical limitations never hampered his learning.
He didn't need more one-on-one attention to study, but physically things sometimes took a bit longer for Andreas.
For his own reassurance, his friend Emery was placed in every one of Andreas' classes until junior high. Emery was his security blanket.
--drop to the mat.
Something that sounds so trivial as learning to tie your shoeslaces is a landmark of development for children. Andreas was well into elementary school before he learned how.
"Everyone always did it for me, and I kind of accepted it," Andreas said.
It didn't come as easy for Andreas with his athletic shoes, but it is second nature to him now.
Another milestone was getting dressed without help. Andreas was at a disadvantage when he wore jeans because without thumbs, zippers and buttons were difficult to grab.
Amanda remembers sitting in church and watching Andreas dig through his pocket for quarters, dimes and pennies, thinking that it must be really difficult.
"His greatest handicap is in the eye of the beholder," Chris said about her son. "We had a lot of people tell us that down the line when he was a teenager, things would really be bad for him, but he has made a liar out of anybody whoever tried to predict anything."
It was Chris' natural instinct to stand by her child and hope that his strength of character would allow him to move forward in spite of his condition. She would have given anything, including one of her own arms, to erase his "handicap" and sometimes his struggles hurt, but she knew she couldn't coddle him.
"We wanted him to stand as tall as he could and be a man and not have to look to see if there was someone to lean on." Chris said. "Certainly anybody who knows Andreas can say that he certainly stands tall. He made his own way in the world."
"No matter if you're 10 feet tall, if you're 2 feet tall, if you're fat, if you're skinny, they are going to ask you a question, and I just happen to have something that is different from most kids." Andreas said.
Andreas remembers kids making fun of him, but he tried to ignore them, not because they were bad, but because every kid gets made fun of at some point in his life. His arms just made him an easier target.
Amanda recalls family vacations to the Grand Canyon, Wyoming and Mesa Verde when children would just stand and stare at her brother.
While some teased him, others were simply curious and asked blunt questions about his shortened arms and four fingers.
"I would start to feel a sense or relief when the parents would come over and, I thought, to get the child, but oftentimes the parents would just come stand and stare as well." Amanda said.
It was hard to keep Andreas away from a soccer ball. Beginning in elementary school, soccer became Andreas' favorite sport. His feet and legs were as good as his teammates on the soccer field. Emery and Andreas played soccer together until they parted ways for college, and one memory stands out for Andreas: the time he was called for a hand ball in high school.
As Andreas recalled, "Emery went off on the ref and said, 'How the fuck is that a hand ball? He doesn't even have hands.' I knew he wasn't being mean. He was just arguing the fact that we didn't want to lose possession of the ball. He ended up getting a yellow card for arguing, which I thought was quite amusing."
Some referees wouldn't call it because they weren't sure how to approach calling a hand ball on a player who didn't have hands. But this time, as the ball grazed his arm, a referee made the call.
Just as it is at any high school, sports are important for boys at Baldwin High School, and Andreas struggled to find his place in football and basketball, the major sports.
Kit Harris, Baldwin's wrestling coach, noticed Andreas' athletic ability in a physical education class and decided to reach out to him and his parents. He had seen wrestlers with physical disabilities who found a way to compete, such as
Earl lones, a three-time Kansas high school state champion, who wrestled although he had just one leg.
Joe. Andreas' older brother, wrestled in high school, but he was apprehensive about his brother trying out the sport. It would be tough for Andreas because he wouldn't have as much leverage as opponents. Many wrestlers grab onto elbows, arms and wrists for their moves. How could Andreas grip without two hands and 10 fingers?
Joe feared his little brother would fail.
Andreas was out to prove that he could succeed. Instead of failing because of what he didn't have, he succeeded because of what he did have — strong legs. Enter his signature move; the scissor hold.
The goal in wrestling is to control the opponent and turn him on his back. All Andreas had to use was his legs. Opponents knew the scissors were coming, and so did the cheering Baldwin crowd.
They would shout, "Get the scissors on him! Get the scissors on him! SQUEEEEEZ! SQUEEEEEZ!"
Andreas would lock his legs around his opponent's waist, squeeze the air out of him, and if he executed it correctly, his opponent's shoulders would
"Referees would sometimes stop the
match because he would make you turn blue in the face," Kit said.
His other asset was his ability to wiggle free and escape.
"I kept myself busy doing what I knew how to do." Andreas said. "And that was basically how to get away from your older brothers and figuring out how to not get pinned down."
In two years of varsity wrestling at Baldwin, he was pinned only once.
Before wrestling, Andreas was reluctant to show his short arms and kept them covered with his shirt sleeves in public. In the wrestling ring, his arms were fully exposed for the crowd to see.
"If you can be comfortable with yourself in a purple singlet, then you can be comfortable wearing just about anything," Andreas said.
People sometimes ask Andreas how he drives a manual transmission with his physical "disability". His answer: "Can you put one foot in front of the other?"
Contributed photo
Bill Brandenberger adopted Andreas when he was 2 years old from a Grecian orphanage. Andreas said he has succeeded in academics, athletics and life because both parents encouraged individuality and freethinking for their children.
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pho·co·me·li·a
Definition:
Phocomelia is a rare birth disorder that causes severe birth defects, especially of the upper limbs.
People with phocomelia will often experience missing thigh bones, and hands or feet will be extremely small or look like stumps.
In extreme cases, the fingers of the hands can be fused.
Bones of arms and other appendages can be extremely shortened or absent.
Andreas' Case:
Because Andreas is adopted, his family does not know the direct cause of his phocomelia.
Causes:
■ Researchers think phocomelia is genetically transmitted as a recessive trait or is the result of spontaneous changes in a gene.
■ The signs of phocomelia closely mimic the signs caused by the ingestion of thalidomide, a drug prescribed to treat anxiety, insomnia and morning sickness in pregnant women.
■ In the 1960s, about 10,000 children around the world were born with major malformations because their mothers had taken the thalidomide early in their pregnancies.
Synonyms:
- Roberts SC-Phocomelia Syndrome
- Roberts Tetraphocomelia Syndrome
- SC Phocomelia Syndrome
- Pseudo-thalidomide Syndrome
Sources: www.Webmd.com and Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center