COMMITMENT | to patients and the future
legs were broken, and the bones of his
skull were soft and unformed, leaving
his brain vulnerable to injury. After
Trevor first came home, Scott & White
doctors would visit the Goehls’ home
in College Station to treat him. “They
didn’t hold out much hope. But then
a week went by and then two weeks,”
Mr. Goehl says. “And then they said,
‘You know, we really don’t know what’s
going to happen.’” Trevor says that on
some level he must have understood
what was going on. “My feeling is I
must have overheard that,” he says.
“I’m the kind of personality that says,
‘I’ll show you!’”
Because he was so fragile, the
Goehls carried Trevor around on a
pillow until he was two years old.
One day, while standing up in his
crib, he sneezed and broke both of his
arms. As Trevor got older, he began
having surgeries to repair additional
bone breaks. Dr. Brindley remembers
the Goehls’ many visits to see him.
“He went through several surgeries,
including the Sofield osteotomy,”
recalls Dr. Brindley. “You take the
bone where it’s all gnarled up and cut
it into pieces and thread it on a wire to
straighten it out. Trevor had that done
to his tibia.” The Goehls measure the
years by the location of Trevor’s casts in
holiday photos.
A breakthrough at last
Over the years, the Goehls constantly
sought new information about OI
to help their son. When Trevor was
10 years old, there was a treatment
24
THE CATALYST August 14 | sw.org
breakthrough for children with
osteogenesis imperfecta. Doctors were
using the cancer drug pamidronate to
increase bone density, a known side
effect of the drug. The results were
so striking that the Goehls learned
about it at the yearly osteogenesis
imperfecta conference they attended.
When they got back to Temple, they
“ y doctors are so
M
supportive of what
works for me.
Because of Scott
& White, I drive
a truck, I work, I
work out, and I can
be independent.”
—Trevor Goehl
mentioned the results to Dr. Brindley,
who quickly connected the Goehls
with an endocrinologist at Scott &
White who could help administer the
treatment. “Once we started Trevor
on that medicine, the breaks stopped
and Trevor started growing. That is
a huge thing that Scott & White
did for us,” says Mr. Goehl. Now,
children with osteogenesis imperfecta
start taking the medication as early as
six months of age, and many are able
to walk later in life.
Other than a few small fractures,
the fact that Trevor hasn’t broken a
bone in the 13 years since the
medication took effect is remarkable,
because he has certainly tried some
things that could land even a healthyboned individual in the emergency
room, like flipping a four-wheeler
and running his wheelchair off a curb
at maximum speed.
But these experiences were part of
Trevor’s learning to be as independent
as possible, something he values
above most other things in life. He drives
a Dodge Ram with pedal exte