Ant keeps marching
<p>Anthony Rankin and his sister Emily play on the swings together at a Coeur d'Alene park on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Anthony Rankin doesn't let a prosthetic leg slow him down as the 5-year-old climbs a series of bars at Bluegrass Park.</p>
<p>Anthony "Ant" Rankin, 5, dangles his legs over the edge of a playground feature Wednesday as 3-year-old Will Ohlenkamp watches with interest during an outing at Bluegrass Park in Coeur d'Alene. Rankin, who had his right leg amputated after being diagnosed with Maffucci syndrome, is adapting to his third prosthetic since the surgery two years ago.</p>
<p>5-year-old Anthony "Ant" Rankin climbs up a slide at Bluegrass Park.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - A group of little girls stared down from the top of the playground equipment Wednesday at Coeur d'Alene's Blue Grass Park.
Their eyes were glued to a curly-haired, sunglasses-wearing little boy who skipped across the play area to dive, belly-first onto a nearby swing.
With his stomach on the seat, Anthony "Ant" Rankin, 5, sailed face-forward into the air, pushing himself with his legs.
One of those legs is a prosthesis, attached above the knee, fully visible below the cut-off of the boy's shorts, and the likely source of the young girls' attentions.
"He's not ashamed at all of his leg," said Jessica Rankin, Ant's mom. "Sometimes he'll see a child staring at him, and he'll ask them, 'Do you want to know what happened to my leg?'"
It's been nearly two years to the day that surgeons amputated the boy's lower extremity.
The way Anthony explains it: "My leg got sick, and I had to go to the hospital and have surgery and get this new leg."
Born with Maffucci syndrome, a rare condition, Anthony's right leg was more than three inches shorter than his left leg, and his knee was riddled with non-cancerous, but debilitating tumors.
His parents, Jessica and Peter, agonized as they watched their then 3-year-old child, the youngest of five, struggle to do the things most little boys do without thinking twice - jump, climb, ride a bike.
With mixed emotions, the parents sought a surgeon willing to perform the elective procedure.
"My husband and I had a very heart-wrenching time with the decision because it was a choice," Jessica told The Press in 2008. "We made that choice for him so he could have a better life now. That's probably the hardest part because we are concerned about his resenting us in later years."
Now, two years later, they have no regrets.
"This is the best part, seeing how he's adapted. He doesn't realize he's got to work any harder than the other kids. He never complains," said Jessica, as she watched Anthony scramble and scurry around the playground.
As Ant climbed up one of the play structures, a small, blond-haired boy began tagging behind, transfixed by the titanium artificial limb, its metal knee joint and attached hard plastic thigh.
Jessica asked the tow-headed child if he would like to touch her son's leg. The boy nodded yes, and with his own mother watching, took a moment to run a finger along the areas of the prosthesis.
In the next instant, the curious toddler was off to play again, the leg quickly forgotten.
"That's how it is with kids. Once they have the information, they stop staring, and Anthony is just one of them," Jessica said.
That's what he'll be when he enters kindergarten this fall at the Coeur d'Alene School District's Kinder Center in Hayden.
"I'm really excited because kindergarten is so fun, and I've got my backpack all packed up," Ant said.
The little boy who couldn't jump two years ago completed Kootenai Health's kids triathlon last year, complete with running, swimming and bicycling.
Anthony's favorite part? The swim.
When he took his turn in the water, Ant had the pool to himself.
"The whole place was just cheering him on," Jessica said.
While there were other children with special needs that competed, it was not just a special needs triathlon.
"He was participating in a normal kids' event," Jessica said.
Her son gets very excited when he sees someone with a special need similar to his own.
Jessica said the first time Ant spotted a man without an arm, he said, "Hey! I see you don't have an arm. Wanna see my leg?"
She thinks, because her son was so young when he had the surgery, it's no big deal to him. That's an attitude Jessica and her husband encourage.
"It just became the new normal," Jessica said.
When Anthony grows up, he wants to be a K-9 police officer, at least for this week, Jessica said.
He saw a policeman on television who had a new leg, and then met a local K-9 officer in his Head Start preschool classroom.
That kind of hope for the future signals to Jessica and her husband that they made the right decision two years ago.
"It was worth it. We know it's improved his life," Jessica said. "And he can jump now. That's the thing he always wanted to do."