Faith Noelle Casebolt: Our daughter Faith was born on Christmas day of 2001, in Gautemala City,Gautemala. We do not know a great deal about her early life or her family but she was born with a club foot. We also believe based on her records and x-rays that she sustained a broken leg as an infant and her family brought her to the hospital. They were notified that she had osteogenisis imperfecta (brittle bone disease). Realizing they could not care for her, they surrendered her to the care of Hogar Rafael Ayau, an orphanage in Gautemala City. When she was two(2), we brought her back with us to the United States. She was barely walking and when she did walk she was walking on the outside of her ankle. Wishing to address her club foot and bone disorder we inquired about where we could receive the best care. Being in the medical profession, I had a lot of orthopedic contacts, and they all told me that the Shriner's Hospital would provide the best care and had the best surgeons. We were soon pluged into the Shriner's system. The Geneticist confirmed the diagnosis of osteogenisis imperfecta and has been following ger regularly. The Orthopedic surgeons evaluated her and soon had her foot fixed with surgery. The procedure was extra difficult due to her bone disorder.. Her surgeons did a marvelous job and she has been running ever since. Faith receives ongoing care at Shriner's Hospital in Greenville, SC. She also has a rare condition called Multiple Hereditary Exostosis (multiple bone tumors). She will need further surgery for her hip and may need surgery to remove any tumors that cause pain, compress nerves or in rare instances become malignant. We can not think of any where we would rather have surgery than at Shriner's Hospital.

Aiken boy is 2008-09 face of Jamil Temple    Dawson Fulghum of Aiken is a 10-year-old with a mission:    promoting the Shriners Hospitals for Children. Dawson was officially named the 2008-09 Jamil Temple  Poster Child on Oct. 4. Posters promoting the Shriners Hospital will hang in every Shrine Temple in the state, and fliers with a fact sheet on care offered at the hospitals will go to school infirmaries in Aiken and Lexington counties. "This is the first time a poster child has ever done anything like this," Dawson's mom Bonnie Fulghum said of the fliers. "We were asked in August, and on Oct. 4 was the induction ceremony. He rode in a parade, they had a big barbecue and luncheon, and they threw money at his feet which was donated in his name to the Children's Hospital. He stood up and said, 'I want to thank you for letting me be your poster child because you're helping kids like me,' and he doesn't usually say a lot, so we were shocked." Dawson was born with a hypospadias, hip dysplasia and a hole in his heart, diagnosed at three months, and later developed adverse reactions to the DPT vaccine. He went to the Shriners Hospital in Greenville at a year old, where doctors found an aneurysm, burst and clotted, blocking the flow of blood to his hand. The doctors began surgery suspecting bone cancer presenting as a cyst but found the clot, cleared the blockage without finding any trace of cancer or permanent damage. Dawson still visits the Greenville hospital for treatment for swan's neck syndrome, a deformation of the index finger which causes painful inflammation of the finger joints. "The big thing he's having now with the swan's neck, where you and I would hold a pen normally, the tip of his finger bends back, and it's painful to write. His school has got him a Neo, it's like a computer or word processor, that's helped a great deal because it was taking hours to do homework," Fulghum said. "Swan's neck is very rare from what we understand; either not a lot of kids have it or aren't diagnosed with it." Dawson will serve as poster child until October 2009. Until then, the Fulghums will visit Shrine Club meetings throughout the area presenting the clubs with posters, telling his story and soliciting funds for the Shrine Hospitals and will ride on Shriner floats in holiday parades in the area. He will also appear at the Western Carolina State Fair to sell raffle tickets for the local Shrine Club and will sell desserts at the Aiken Shrine Club's bake sale next Saturday. He is also scheduled to appear at a ribbon cutting for a new playground at the Shrine Hospital in Greenville on Oct. 26. "We're pushing to get it out there because, as parents, we think it saved our child's life, and there may be other parents out there who don't know what kind of great care they have. They may think, 'Well, it's free, it must not be the best care,' but they have the best of the best," said Fulghum. For more information about the Shriners Hospitals for Children, visit www.shrinershq.org, or call (800) 237-5055. Contact Suzanne Stone at sstone@aikenstandard.com.