After suffering a frightening accident earlier this year that almost resulted in the loss of her feet, a little girl from Virginia, who is only seven years old, just made a victorious and miraculous comeback to the stage by participating in The Nutcracker.
Aubrey Scaletta, her father, and her twin sister were driving home from gymnastics practice on May 17 when a section of the ratchet strap that Aubrey was playing with fell out of the window of the vehicle and connected itself to the drive shaft. Aubrey was playing with the strap. It was almost as if Aubrey was being yanked out of the window, and the strap cut both of her feet.
According to a press statement issued by Carilion Clinic, she was promptly transported to the trauma department of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital by helicopter.
Dr. Peter Apel, an orthopedic surgeon, and his colleagues promptly carried out the reattachment operation on Aubrey. This procedure, which would ordinarily need a week of preparation, entailed reconstructing bones, arteries, tendons, nerves, and skin. About six hours were required for Aubrey’s operation.
As soon as I received the phone call around one hour after the accident, they expressed concern that they would have to relocate her to a different location, and I responded by saying, “Hold on a minute.” “Her best chance is here with us tonight—not tomorrow, not in six hours, but right here, right now with us,” Apel stated in a press release. “If her feet are salvageable, then her best chance is here with us tonight.”
“In order to reattach her feet to her legs and reestablish blood flow, we had to perform the operation as quickly as possible,” the physician said. The feet would have perished and very probably would have been amputated if we had delayed even a few hours longer than we did.
An online fundraising campaign called GoFundMe was set up for the family at that time in order to gather money for Aubrey’s medical needs. Over eighty-three thousand dollars had been collected as of Tuesday afternoon.
In accordance with the press statement, Aubrey resumed her activities of walking, jogging, and dancing after undergoing successive operations and a significant amount of rehabilitation time. On the weekend of December 9, she and her sister Grayson participated in a performance of The Nutcracker at the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech. She was assisted by a walker throughout the performance. Prior to the performance, Grayson would not take part in ballet without Aubrey’s presence.
“Even now, it still doesn’t feel like it really happened,” said Lauren Scaletta, Aubrey’s mother, in his statement that was included in the release. In the immediate aftermath of her discharge from the hospital, I was out doing errands when I came across a little girl dressed in a dancing leotard with her mother. It dawned on me that it was possible that we would never be able to engage in activities of that kind again. “She is incredible,” I tell myself over and over again just because I am here and I am able to see her engaging in activities that she enjoys.
Another statement made by Aubrey’s father, Daniel Scaletta, was that “She is definitely a performer.” She has a great deal of ham. I can’t believe I’m seeing her back in her natural environment. In order to be ready, she has been dancing around the house for weeks, and she has been insisting that we play the Nutcracker on the television so that she may see it. It’s likely that she’s the lone child of seven years old who would rather listen to The Nutcracker ballet than traditional Christmas music.
It has been said by Apel that Aubrey will continue to get therapy and recuperation, and that he and the personnel at the facility would continue to support her in healing.
During a video interview conducted by Carilion Clinic, Daniel expressed his gratitude to the medical personnel that provided treatment to his daughter. He said, “There is nothing we can really say that would ever be enough.” Amazingly, they were both. The compassion that each and every person shown for Aubrey.
Lauren went on to say, “They are without a doubt heroes.” It is true that they are.
When it comes to Aubrey, Lauren has said that her daughter is going to do whatever that she puts her mind. A chuckle came out of her mouth as she said, “We just kind of sit back and let her guide the way.”