Returning the favor

Every afternoon, 11-year-old Iliana Arevalo diligently pins pieces of fabric, sews them together, shoves cotton inside the new sleeve and finishes pillow after pillow in a homemade assembly line.

She has finished 61 pillows so far. Her hope is to make 100 by the time she checks in to Shriners Hospitals for Children in St. Louis for a six-hour hip surgery Thursday.

Iliana has acetabular dysplasia, meaning her hip sockets don't cover the ball that sits on top of her thigh bone.

She has no outside rotation in either leg and walks with her left leg turned slightly in. Even sitting Indian-style is too painful for her.

Iliana had the idea to make pillows for patients at Shriners after her first visit to the hospital.

Swimming 4,000 to 6,000 yards per day with the Cape Girardeau Gators has helped Iliana Arevello deal with hip problems and pains that would have otherwise sidelined her active lifestyle. (Kit Doyle)

"I came out of the X-ray room and this lady was handing out teddy bears," Iliana said. On another visit, she received a crocheted blanket made by a group of ladies in Iowa.

The gifts made her happy, Iliana said, and she decided she wanted to return the favor.

"They're giving to us, so this is our way of giving something back," said her mother, DeAnna Arevalo.

The family's insurance will not cover the surgery because developmental dislocated hip is a pre-existing condition. Shriners Hospital in St. Louis is one of 18 in the country that specializes in children's orthopedics. It offers services free to children up to 18 years old.

Arevalo suggested making pillows "to kind of refocus and not be afraid of the surgery."

Iliana Arevalo, 11, laughed as 4-year-old Sarah Mickinley Davis climbed on her after their swimming period at the Gator summer league. Iliana helps teach younger classes after she swims with the Gators in the morning. (Kit Doyle)

A fellow parishioner at Cape Bible Chapel taught Iliana to sew in August. She and another girl, Noel Ray, spent Thursday afternoons at Doreen Whitaker's home, learning to make aprons, skirts and pillows.

"She was quick, quick to learn, and she had good ideas," Whitaker said, adding that she never imagined Iliana would have an idea like this.

"I've been impressed. I'm very pleased with her," she said.

Iliana has 24 more pillows in progress, putting her just 26 shy of her 100-pillow goal. She only sews in the afternoon. Every morning, she swims.

When she's not surrounded by shreds of fabric, boxes of stuffing and a sewing machine, Iliana is submerged in the swimming pool at Gators swim practice.

While she glides through the water with almost no pain from 7 to 9 every morning, she can't complete a two-hour shopping trip without freezing up.

"They said swimming is what kept her out of pain," Arevalo said.

Iliana started swimming when she was 5 and joined the Gators swim team four years ago.

She competes weekly and has "no idea" how many medals she has.

"I've been trying to hang them up," she said, pointing to a tangled pile of ribbons and medals on her nightstand.

"That's going to be the first thing I do after my surgery is swim," Iliana said.

She has to stay out of the water for six weeks after the surgery, but said her mother promised to take her to the pool anyway.

Iliana will be in surgery most of the day Thursday. She will stay in the hospital for six days, then do rehabilitation at home.

In her surgery, called a periacetabular osteotomy, doctors will cut the hip bone and reposition it to cover the leg bone.

"What makes this particular surgery better is the acetabular rim stays intact," said Tammy Norman, nursing care coordinator at Shriners. "So that allows the patient to be partially weight-bearing pretty much right after surgery."

Iliana will use crutches for short distances, like getting around the house, and will have a wheelchair for longer trips.

"Her major problem is the socket," Norman said.

A normal hip socket forms a cup that hovers over the ball of the femur like an ice cream scooper over a golf ball. Iliana's hip socket has almost no concave features.

"Hers is kind of like a slanted spoon," Norman said.

The muscles and tendons are basically holding the bone in place, Iliana's swim coach Steve Franklin said. He said in four years of being on the team, Iliana rarely complained of pain.

"The nagging little pains were just something that came with it," Franklin said. "Now you know why."

Iliana leaves the pool at about 11 in the morning and works on pillows in the afternoon. The pillows already drown the couch in her basement, but Iliana still sits upstairs at the Disney sewing machine she borrowed from her friend Noel, pinning, sewing and stuffing the rest.

charris@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 246