Medical Update - 3/7/9

So this past Tuesday we went back to the Club Foot clinic for our pre-op consultation. Everything is a "Go".

For those who don't remember, or can't keep track . . . little Annie-lu was born with two clubbed feet. A very strange term that brings to mind very inaccurate images . . .

Basically, if you sit in a chair and turn your ankle so that the outside (pinky) edge of your foot is on the floor with the sole facing your opposite foot, you start to get an idea. Now keep bending your ankle until the arch of your foot actually touches the inside of your ankle. That's a clubbed foot (at least in Annie's case).

We went through the casting process this past fall for 9 or 10 weeks with remarkable results. Unfortunately, casting alone will not get us where we need to be. Surgery is scheduled for this Tuesday. I did my best to explain the procedure in a previous post and I haven't learned much more about it since then. I do know that it seems a lot more real today than it did 3 months ago.

When I was a child we had a community swimming pool called the key-hole because of it's shape. It is where my mother took me to swimming lessons. My family would go there on hot 1970's summer afternoons. The summer day camp I attended when my mother went back to work swam at the pool once a week. If my memory is correct, people stopped going to the pool in the 80's when the AIDS scare was at it's height and people thought you could contract HIV from a public pool. They eventually filled it in . . . . But I digress . . .

The pool had three diving boards - two short and one tall. I can still feel my pulse quicken when I think back to what it was like to stand at the far edge of the pool thinking, "I can do that" and the vast chlorinated ocean of difference there was in actually standing at the end of that board a seeming mile in the sky - with the whole world watching . . .

That's sort of what it feels like now that the day is upon us. We are standing at the edge of the diving board, toes curled over, dizzy from the height, wanting to climb back down the ladder yet knowing that in the end everything is going to be just fine. We just have to not throw up in front of all these people . . . or pee our pants . . . don't puke and don't pee . . . at least not until you are safely in back in the water . . . which is why it was also known as the "Pee-hole" . . . maybe that's why they closed it down . . .

Check in is at 11am with the surgery scheduled at 1pm. From what I guess, the surgery will last a couple of hours and then we will all spend the night at the hospital Tuesday night. Holly has the day off Wednesday but I will need to head back to the office . . .

We will do our best to keep everyone posted on the big day.

That's the latest. 

"Go Annabelle" day is Tuesday, April 14th. Sport-em if you got 'em.