High Stepping : Millett Bucks Medical Experts to Stand Tall for Chatsworth

Mike Millett was tossing a football around in his back yard when he heard a pop. It sounded like a small gun. Or possibly a balloon.

It was his right hamstring.

“I couldn’t stand up and if I moved, even if I breathed, it hurt,” Millett said. “I was all alone and I’m screaming in the back yard.”

Millett crawled into his house and waited for help. “It was the worst pain I’ve had to endure,” he said.

But now, three years after severely pulling his hamstring and almost a year after he was told that he might never walk again, Millett is a middle blocker on the Chatsworth High volleyball team that plays Palisades tonight in the City Section 4-A Division championship at UCLA.

Mike Millett was born with a disorder in which everything on the right side of the body below the hip either atrophies or is reduced. Millett’s right foot is two sizes smaller than his left and his right leg is three-quarters of an inch shorter than his left.

Doctors told Millett’s parents that he wouldn’t be able to walk until he was 2, and once he did, he would have limited mobility and probably would not be able to run.

“The doctors’ reports were grim,” said Ken Millett, Mike’s dad. “He said the prospects for him outgrowing this were nil. Some people born with this defect are confined to wheelchairs, others are having to use crutches and still others are unable to do anything physical.”

Millett proved them wrong.

“I was walking by nine months,” Millett said. “The doctor said, ‘You shouldn’t be able to do this. Your muscles shouldn’t be developed.’ ”

Millett participated in youth sports and remained competitive despite his physical limitations. His cheerful demeanor also impressed his teammates.

“He was always smiling and there was never a time when he was depressed,” said Greg Weaver, a teammate on the Chancellors’ volleyball team and a classmate since first grade. “He was always in a good mood.”

Said Ken: “He never allowed it to become a negative in his life.”

As Millett grew, his right hamstring shrunk, preventing him from touching the toes on the right foot. He continued to play sports at Nobel Junior High in Northridge, but his mobility decreased as the pain increased.

And then, one day while playing football alone in his back yard, he pulled his hamstring.

Doctors put his leg in a full-length cast for three months and told Millett that, once the cast was off, his mobility would be limited. Once again, Millett’s leg confounded the doctors. With his leg still in a cast, he played handball with his friends--and beat them.

But when the cast came off, he had to slow down. His leg had atrophied and without the cast to support his hamstring, Millett could not walk.

“My legs couldn’t support me. I’d just fall over,” he said.

His friends didn’t support him either. Hurt and afraid that he wouldn’t be able to walk properly again, Millett turned to them for understanding. Instead, they made fun of his disability, laughed when he fell and called him “gimpy.”

But rather than turn away from them, Millett tried to get closer. He wanted to be one of them and the insecurity he felt about his leg heightened.

He started drinking with them.

“I thought maybe if I drink, everyone would like me,” he said. “I used to party with everyone else. Now I’ve found something else to fill that void so I don’t need to go out and drink.

“I don’t need it because I’ve got God.”

Millett had no intention of becoming a Christian when he first met Rob Lund. Or the second time he talked to him. Or the third.

Lund, a representative from the Faith Evangelical Church of Northridge, visited Millett at his house at the request of Millett’s parents. They didn’t know Millett was drinking with his friends, but they thought their son would enjoy going to church.

Millett thought otherwise. Every time Lund asked Millett to attend church, Millett found some reason not to go. “I’d say, ‘Gee, I can’t go. My mom wants me to do the dishes. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket,’ ” Millett said. “He must have asked me to go to church or do something 50 times.”

Although Millett didn’t want to go to church, he frequently played basketball in the Milletts’ back yard with Lund. Gradually, their discussions about basketball turned to talks about the Bible.

“He was persistent and he became my friend,” Millett said. “I looked at him and said, ‘That’s what I want to be. That guy is always happy.’ ”

Millett went to church with Lund and immediately liked it. “I liked to be there. Those people cared about me,” he said. “No one at church ever made fun of me because of my leg. Not one. That was a big deal to me.”

Millett became a regular at the church, going from silent observer to active participant. He teaches Bible school for sixth-graders now and has turned the insecurity about his leg into confidence about his overall ability.

“I just changed my attitude, 180 degrees from the attitude I had before. From negative to positive,” Millett said. “I was running, feeling really good, really confident, working really hard, and thankful that I can walk. I can run.

“And that was the attitude I had to have. Instead of ‘I’m never going to do this’, I had a thankful attitude.”

Less than a year later, doctors warned that Millett, a 6-foot, 3-inch junior, might not be able to walk again.

Millett played for Chatsworth’s junior varsity team as a sophomore, but his hamstring tightened again and doctors recommended surgery.

“Everything was going good and all of a sudden, I’ve got this big problem,” Millett said.

Although one doctor recommended a procedure in which the muscle is cut into sections and pieced together, Millett and his parents decided to have the hamstring removed.

“We wanted a permanent solution,” Millett said.

If the operation worked, the doctor said, both of Millett’s legs would be in a cast for four months and then he would begin a slow, yearlong process of strengthening the unused muscles in the back of his leg.

If the operation was unsuccessful, Millett would not be able to use the leg again.

“I had to have the attitude that everything was going to be fine,” Millett remembered. “But I’ve still got to wake up and know that I’m not going to walk for a year.”

When Millett awoke, he found a brace on his right leg, but no cast on his left. The operation was more successful than anyone had anticipated. The doctor cut the right hamstring and found a muscle behind the hamstring that worked perfectly.

Millett asked the doctor if the muscle developed through weightlifting. “It couldn’t have been that,” the doctor responded.

Once again, Millett’s right leg kicked the slim odds the doctors gave it.

Millett does not start for the Chancellors, but he is one of the primary substitutes on a team that uses at least 11 players each match. Every time he comes out of the game, Millett gives a prayer of thanks for the spikes and kills he has just attempted.

“Every time I go out on the floor now, I have to prove something to God,” Millett said. “God’s giving me the power for everything. It’s all because of Him that I can even walk.”

Millett does not pressure his teammates to join his church. Instead, he tries to be a positive influence on their attitude, whether Chatsworth is winning, losing or just practicing.

“People always ask me, ‘Why are you so happy?’ ” Millett said. “Well, what’s there to be sad about?”