From Loss to Empowerment

Hayden hatch ’12 gets mixed reactions. When he is out for a jog and people see the curved carbon fiber running blade that replaces his right leg below the knee, some say “That’s super cool.” Others tell him they didn’t know such a super strong yet springy thing existed.

“It’s a common misconception that people who are missing a limb aren’t that active because they can’t be,” says Hatch, a resident physician at Boston Children’s Hospital. “But if you think of the Paralympics, with the technology that exists nowadays almost anything is possible for someone with a limb difference.”

Hatch does get around. Last fall, he volunteered on a 10-day trip to Zambia’s capital Lusaka with the Limb Kind Foundation. While there, its physical and occupational therapists made prostheses for 30 children, none of whom had ever walked without crutches.

Of all the children, the one Hatch got to know the best was a boy born with bilateral hip disarticulation—he had no legs. He got about by using both of his hands to push himself on the ground. “He went from being carried around to walking. It was incredible to see,” says Hatch who plans to return to Lusaka next year or visit Sri Lanka or Ethiopia, two other nations where Limb Kind does charity work.

“I want to show them that something that sounds scary can be empowering and that it can give them multiple skills they’d never dreamed of.”

Hayden Hatch ’12

Looking back, Hatch calls his Zambia experience “life changing.” He spent time with the children’s parents and learned that for many of them, just traveling to the Beit Cure Hospital, which specializes in children’s orthopedic issues, was a challenge. In this central African nation where the average annual income is $1,300, artificial limbs are unaffordable. Few adults expect children missing limbs to go to school. They are seen as hopeless cases. Besides their disabilities, social stigma sullies them—and their families.

“Parents were awestruck when I told them I was a doctor in the United States and was able to become one despite missing a limb. That wasn’t something they could imagine for their children,” says Hatch. “My story inspired them to have faith and hope their child could become a physician.”

Hatch was born with a congenital condition in which his tibia, the weight- bearing bone that connects the ankle and knee, was curved. To make matters worse, he practically had no fibula, the bone which supports the tibia. His condition has no name. To this day Hatch doesn’t know what caused it.

Diagnosed at 10 months, he got along reasonably well. He ran a mile in fifth grade in the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, though he was slower than other children. He took part in all gym activities and suffered little teasing. “People around me were very supportive,” he recalls.

But his life changed one day in sixth grade gym class. He was running around, and his tibia snapped. “I felt excruciating pain,” he says. For the next 20 years, Hatch used crutches. He endured surgeries and corrective braces that failed to correct the leg. Chronic pain became his companion. By 2021, when he had the limb amputated, it was six inches shorter than his left leg.

Even before the accident, doctors had advised his parents to remove the limb. “Whenever my orthopedic surgeon mentioned the word amputation, I would faint in his office. My dad had to sit behind me on his examining table to prevent me from falling backwards when that word was said.”

His parents rejected such advice. They wanted their son to have as much autonomy in his life as possible. They feared that a decision to remove the limb might limit future choices their son might want to make.

“It’s my goal to get rid of that feeling shared by children with similar conditions,” says Hatch. “I want to show them that something that sounds scary can be empowering and that it can give them multiple skills they’d never dreamed of.”

When asked whether he regrets not having the surgery sooner, he grows pensive and replies, “It’s hard to tell. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know if I would be in the same field I’m in now,” he says. The years of suffering “radically changed my life for the better,” according to him. “I think it convinced me to help others. If I’d had the surgery early on, I might not be in the same position in the medical field, showing kids what they could become.”

Hatch plans to become a board- certified neurologist and see patients while also doing research into the neurogenetics of neurodevelopmental conditions. A decisive moment came during his work in the Pomona College neuroscience lab of Karen Parfitt, the wife of Steve Adolph, a Harvey Mudd biology professor under whom Hatch also studied. “That was the light bulb moment, like, Oh, this thing called neuroscience is interesting to me,” he recalls. One day he would like to lead an organization that bridges science, medicine and advocacy work.

A turning point in his life came prior to his amputation when he joined a Facebook group for parents and caregivers of children who have the condition Claes Jensen syndrome. At the time, he was studying this rare neurodevelopmental disorder in a lab while getting his MD and PhD in biomedical sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, but the syndrome seemed abstract.

One day, he decided to bring together children with the syndrome at a Long Island event on Rare Disease Day. (It falls each year on Feb. 28.) It was the first time they had met anyone else who shared their condition. “Seeing children with the same rare syndrome meet each other convinced me this was the field I wanted to be in, and it convinced me to get the surgery. I realized there was something I could do to enhance my well-being.”

Those families still talk about Hatch. 31 “He showed them he truly cared about them and that his research was trying to better their lives,” says geneticist Julie Secombe, his PhD thesis advisor at Einstein. According to her, his efforts led to the formation of a foundation which seeks to find a cure for the syndrome.

“Hayden has overcome incredible obstacles to get where he is,” says Dr. Myles Akabas who oversees the dual MD/ PhD degree program at Einstein. “He has amazing strength of character. When he told me he had finally come to grips with the fact that they had to amputate, I started crying, and he told me it was going to be okay.”

Hatch foresees amazing developments in 10 to 20 years in the field of prostheses. An emerging technology called osteointegration might connect artificial limbs to bone by being screwed in like a dental implant. Some prostheses might even link to the nervous system. “A recipient will control his foot as though he has an actual limb. It amazes me,” says Hatch whose titanium lower leg has a hydraulic ankle. “That, to me, is cool.”