Today a Molly from Missouri is helping doctors push the frontiers of medicine. Born with severe hand and foot deformities, Molly Wiseman has braved reconstructive surgeries with a “no problem” attitude. She cheerfully chats with doctors and nurses while in the hospital and races around the house while playing with her older brother.

She is just three years old but already has overcome great hurdles without apparent adverse effect. Said her mother, Beth, “Molly is unstoppable”.

Molly was born in 1998 with Greig cephalopolysyndactyly syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder. Molly is believed to be just the 41st child born anywhere in the world with Greig syndrome since it was first described in medical literature in 1928.

As a result of a mutation that doctors cannot explain, genes that control the development of the hands and feet did not work normally during Molly’s gestation. As a result, her toes and fingers were fused together (syndactyly) and she had extra toes and fingers (polydactyly).

Molly was immediately seen by geneticists and a plastic surgeon at Cardinal Glennon so they could begin planning all the steps that would be needed to reconstruct her hands and feet. The goal was a normal-looking Molly by her first day in school.

“The doctors told us this would happen in one in a billion kids,” said her father, Neal. “Her syndrome is so rare, the doctors didn’t know what to expect. They pretty much ask us how she is doing.”

During her first year, Molly still had a lot of fun. Not realizing she had a disability, she came up with ways to play with her toys and brother even though she was not able to use her fingers.

By the time Molly celebrated her third birthday last fall, she had undergone two surgeries to separate her fingers and remove the extra finger she had on the outside of each hand.

Kerri M. Woodberry, M.D., a plastic surgeon specializing in hand surgery, delayed Molly’s first operation until she was about a year old so her hands would be a bit larger and she would be bigger, too, to help her better handle anesthesia.

“When we got home from the hospital after each surgery, she automatically went on doing whatever she wanted to do,” Beth said. “She didn’t let it stop her. It might have taken her a couple of extra minutes to figure out a special way of doing something, but she did it.”

Early in 2002 Molly will have her first foot surgery to remove the extra toes and reconstruct the big toe on each foot. Her feet, however, had not been a factor in Molly’s daily activities.

“She walks fine. She really is good at roller-blading. You can’t stop her,” her mother said. “She likes to color and draw and paint,” her mother said. “We bought her brother a bike with training wheels for his birthday. She took off on it, so she got a bike for Christmas.”

Molly and her brother, five-year-old Neal Jr., are great friends. “They’re so close in age they play together all the time,” her father said. “She’ll do anything her brother does. If he wants her to do something and runs off into a dark room, she takes off and follows him in there.”

Molly has spent quite a bit of her life at Cardinal Glennon, where she has come to consider her doctors and nurses as friends. While her brother is somewhat shy, Molly is quite outgoing.

“She has always been coming to the hospital. She isn’t afraid of coming here at all," said her mom.” “We thought she would be scared, but the last time we were here she hopped right up in her bed and started coloring.”

Molly brought her favorite doll, which had its hands bandaged to look like hers would be after the operation.

“When we come to the hospital, all the nurses want us to call them so they know we’re coming in,” Beth said. “They get a kick out of her. She sits on her bed and talks to everybody. When people leave, she says, ‘Nice talking to you!’”

After her foot operation, Molly will need another surgery to straighten her thumbs. After that, she probably will face a few minor plastic surgeries as time goes by to fix other minor cosmetic abnormalities that accompanied Greig syndrome.

Her doctors have achieved their goal of making Molly as normal as possible before she became self-conscious about the things that would have made her different.

“They wanted to have it all done by the time she starts school. I don’t think she’s noticed it yet,” said Neal. “A lot of the kids who have had the syndrome have been mentally retarded. As far as we can tell, everything with her is fine. She is learning, and she sure can talk.”

“Molly is doing extremely well,” said Woodberry. “She is using her hands very well. She has good function, being able to pick up objects, separate her fingers and make a fist. As she gets older she will probably need more surgery to improve the alignment of her thumbs and possibly to straighten her fingers more.”

“The first year after she was born was really scary. I talked to Dr. Woodberry constantly. I called her at her office, on her cell phone, in her car,” Beth said. “We don’t really think about it anymore. She is just so normal we don’t really notice that she’s different. But then, how do you define normal?”