Patient Ambassador, Ava

Shriners Hospitals for Children is proud to introduce Ava Diehl as one of our youngest patient ambassadors. Ava, age 5, has been a patient of the St. Louis Shriners Hospital since infancy, beginning a series of procedures and treatments for congenital femoral deficiency, which means her left femur is much shorter than her right one. The prosthetics staff at Shriners Hospital provides her with a prosthetic leg in order to equalize their length. This prosthesis allows her to be able to walk, run, and play like all of her friends.

Her family became connected to Shriners Hospital through their local physicians, who referred the family to the hospital for is medical staff’s level of expertise in this rare condition.

Hailing from O’Fallon, IL, a suburb of St. Louis, Ava is an animated preschooler who loves to make dresses and hairbands for her dolls and play with her best friend and cousin, Wesleigh, who lives down the street from her. The two have lots of princess play dresses and they’re rarely seen together without their princess attire – which gives her GREAT experience at being the Illinois Shrine Game Princess. In addition she’s great at making things from play doh, so her parents are Blake and Rachael Diehl suspect she’ll be an engineer once she outgrows her princess phase.

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On Set With Ava

Go behind the scenes on the recent music video production of I Want To Know What Love Is with rock band, Foreigner.

PATIENT SPOTLIGHTS

AVA

ZAVI

TAYLOR

ALEC

MIA