Abandoned at birth, triumphant at 53

On an August night in 1961, a baby girl — one week old — was left on the steps of City Hall in Seoul. She was one of thousands of orphans in post-war South Korea who lost their parents to bombs and violence, lost their soldier fathers to the Western countries they came from, or lost their families to poverty that made keeping them impossible.

The baby was taken to an orphanage, where she was one of dozens of infants, each laid in their wooden cradles in a big room lit brightly from above and staffed by nurses with too many babies and not enough time.

Baby No. 2881 was just 13 pounds when she was adopted by Douglas and Marjorie Turrell of North Wales, Penn. in October 1962. She couldn't sit up, she couldn't crawl, she couldn't babble. At 14 months, she could have passed for a two month old.

Today, Baby No. 2881 is Kim Elizabeth Manning, Red Cross volunteer, survivor of three hip replacements, triathlete, sometime Buddhist, wife of Steve Berkson, mother of Simon, a black "yorkiepoo." (Part Yorkshire terrier, part poodle.)

The past decade has been a string of setbacks for Manning, 53. She has had three sets of hip surgeries since 2006 to correct hip dysplasia and a condition called osteonecrosis, in which blood flow to the head of the femur is disrupted and the bone dies, destroying the joint.

It should have been one surgery, but each time the prosthetic hips released chromium and cobalt into her blood. The heavy metals poisoned her, and the prosthetics were taken out and replaced.

She has been through years of physical therapy, medical treatment and soul searching and has come out the other side with a new approach to living.

Manning grew up in North Wales, a suburb of Philadelphia. Her parents had two "homegrown" children, Don and Emily, who were 14 and 12, respectively, when she came along. They had read a newspaper article about another couple who had adopted infants from Korea after the war and felt inspired to do it as well.

"We had two children, but we had more love to give," was how they explained it to Manning.

They read to her, played with her, fed her, put her to bed early, and one day, she shot into toddlerhood.

"I sat up, stood up and walked all in the same week," she said. She skipped crawling entirely.

Her parents, an electrical engineer and a homemaker, talked about her adoption and celebrated her "Gotcha Day" every year, but it wasn't until Manning was 7 that she realized with sudden clarity that she didn't look like her Caucasian parents.

"I was really upset about it," she said. "I wonder if that's the time I started to feel not good enough."

Manning spent much of her early life wanting to be someone else — taller, blonder, more of what passed for "normal" in the mid-century Rust Belt. She and her also-adopted sister, Koren, were the only Asian students in their elementary school, and she felt her difference keenly. It was as if everyone was watching her, making her a proxy for all Asian girls.

She was a compliant child and teenager, she said, but she never felt that she measured up to the world she worked so hard to fit herself into perfectly. And in trying so hard to fit, she never really got to know herself.

She struggled with the feeling through her 20s. After graduating from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in social work, Manning bounced around among jobs and careers, "trying to find herself," she said.

She settled on a job at the Red Cross, inspired by her mother's volunteer work with the organization, and married at 28.

Everything changed when she was 35.

Her doctors announced that she would need hip replacements sooner rather than later, and she realized she had little time left to try the things that, deep down, she had always longed to do.

Learning to do the flying trapeze was first on the list — but where does one ever encounter those lessons?

Manning told her "Holy Trinity" (God, Buddha and the Universe) that if trapeze lessons happened to come along, she would do it. Three weeks later, she learned the Circus Arts Workshop was down the street from her house.

She signed up, learned to fly, and everything changed.

She went sky diving, took lessons in fire walking and board breaking, flew a fighter jet and learned how much fun it is just to see how much she can do.

"I like to try new things," Manning said. "I like to push myself."

But the same year, she was pushed out of her marriage. She divorced after seven years, reflecting now that she became too much of a "free spirit" for her former husband.

She met her current husband, Steve, several years later when they were both at conferences in Maryland. She moved to Salem in 2003 to be with him and had her first hip surgery in 2006.

That should have been the end of the story. She should have been able to move on from the hip problems she suspects were caused by the lack of exercise and movement she had as a baby in the South Korean orphanage.

It wasn't the end. Years later, she had trouble remembering basic facts, focusing on work, and she would start a task just to forget what she was doing halfway through and start over.

"I thought I was going crazy," she said.

A friend suggested a blood test. She went to the doctor and discovered her new hip was poisoning her.

Surgeons removed it in 2011, which is a tricky move because the procedure can break the femur in the process. The surgery went well, and she left the hospital with two new hips, all over again.

And all over again, the cognitive problems started. Manning slipped into severe anxiety, and then one day, the letter came in the mail.

The Stryker Rejuvenate prosthetic hips inside her body had been recalled — for causing heavy metals poisoning. Salem Hospital needed her to come in for an X-ray, MRI and blood tests.

"It was probably more shock than anything," she said, recalling the day she read that piece of paper.

Chromium and cobalt were present at toxic levels, and the hips would have to come out.

This time, she decided to take full control of the situation. She worked with a physical therapist, personal trainer, massage therapist and even a hypnotherapist to prepare as completely for the December 2013 surgery as she could.

She was in and out of the operating room in less than two hours.

This third set of prosthetic hips are the Zimmer Wagner SL model, which has a 25-year clean track record. She has shown no signs of heavy metals poisoning again, and this time, Manning really is moving forward.

She has spent the years since her first hip replacement as an avid Red Cross volunteer and has been deployed to 18 disaster relief sites. She was at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, handing out water, sunscreen and hugs.

She remembers not crying until years later when she went back to see the memorial.

At the time, "I think I was just stunned. I don't think I could comprehend it," she said.

Hurricanes, floods, wildfires — they've all seen Manning in the aftermath, helping the communities they have devastated. She even learned American Sign Language just in case she ever needed to aid a deaf victim.

In some ways, she has now taken on her own body as a disaster relief project.

"I'm finding I need some kind of physical goal to keep me motivated and keep me moving forward," she said.

She used exercise as a way to recover from her surgeries, but it then became a way to set goals and break them. Her personal trainer helped her move from a "super sprint" triathlon to an Olympic triathlon this year.

She completed it at the West Salem Courthouse gym on July 20, the day after she turned 53.

Manning swam one mile, rode a stationary bike for 24.8 miles and walked 6.2 miles. She did it alone, racing against no one but herself, although a friend kept her company.

She finished in 4 hours, 18 minutes and 34 seconds.

Somewhere along the way, between the surgeries, the divorce, the remarriage, the cross-country move, the disasters, the two bouts of blood poisoning and the years of helping others donate blood, Kim Elizabeth Manning surfaced.

This woman is resilient, accepting, positive, incorrigible and irreverent: All her words.

"What other people think of you is not your business," she said. "That's a hard lesson to learn."

Baby No. 2881 turned out to be quite a person.

hhoffman@StatesmanJournal .com, (503) 399-6719 or follow at twitter.com/HannahKHoffman

Get to know Kim Manning

Age: 53

Family: Husband, Steve; brother, Don; sisters, Emily and Koren; dog, Simon