The story of Sloan
Sloan was a level 3 Junior Olympic competitive gymnast in San Antonio, TX when she began having right ankle pain. In May 2023 she was complaining that her ankle would not flex properly, she felt pain on impact on the floor, beam and vault. Initially we thought she had a sprain because the bulge in her ankle was growing and appeared to be swelling so we brought her to an orthopedic surgeon to check it out via xray. When the results were ready he explained to us that he had never seen anything like this as there was an excess bone mass growing out of her ankle joint. We were instructed to get an MRI which led to an official diagnosis of Trevor’s disease. Trevors’s disease is a RARE 1 in a million disease that mostly affects males. This was a shock to us when we learned how RARE this disease is and that it’s even more RARE that it affected Sloan because she is a girl. The gist of the disease is that it can affect the joints of an entire limb and these extra bone growths can continue pop up during her life. Thankfully, in July 2023, we found Dr. Matthew Dobbs at the Paley Institute in West Palm Beach, FL. He immediately made a plan to go into surgery August 2023 to remove most of the bone while carefully keeping Sloan’s joint in tact and growth plate unscathed. After an entire month of intense PT Sloan was back up and walking Oct 2023 and had been gradually getting back to normal activity. Last night Jan 11, 2025 she performed in her first tap performance since she was a toddler. There are days the ankle gives her pain and we deal with managing the pain but overall we are beyond thankful that she is able to participate in the activities she loves. Sloan continues to travel from Texas to Florida to have quarterly checks and thus far all is clear. We have been cleared to return to gymnastics and Sloan is hopeful she can return to competing soon in the near future.