Medical Update - Feet - 5/29

Sorry.

The Internet has been down at the house and I have been working 13-15 hours a day which leaves little time for anything else - but enough about me (he blogged)!

We went into the club foot clinic Tuesday morning. They cut Annabelle's casts off and we were eager to get our first post-surgery look at her feet.

My thinking was: "Major surgery followed by casts for 6 weeks could = nasty"

I suppose the wife and I should have consulted on this point. I was preparing for weak-in-the-knees nasty and she was preparing for something considerably less troubling.

As they cut the casts off, I could see the stained gauze around Annie's ankles and I thought, "Yep". Once the casts and padding were off, the tech began pulling the gauze off and stopped. "Let me get the doctor", he said - and stepped out of the room. The wife shot me a worried glance.

The doc came in, finished removing the gauze and said . . . "Well, we don't like to see this but we see it all the time . . ."

He went on to explain that when you make such a drastic change of position in one procedure, the skin does funny things. It bunches up in some places and stretches in others. In Annie's case, her skin was stretched around her heels (right where they did the incision for the operation).

Her right foot looked pretty good but her left foot was not-so-good. The dissolving sutures were gone but the skin had failed to heal together. There is about a 1/4 inch gap in her skin running from her arch, around her heel and midway down the outside of her foot. It was about 1/8 of an inch deep and pretty nasty looking.

The doc assured us that it would all heal but that it would take some time.

He wrapped her feet in gauze so that we could have her cast for orthodics.

The gal from the orthodics company came in and wrapped Annie's legs in fiberglass to make molds for her AFO's (Ankle-foot-orthodics). The process was pretty aggressive and after seeing what we had just seen, pretty difficult to watch. 

The AFO's are basically little plastic boots with the front missing so that you can see your shin and the top of your foot. You slip right into them since they are molded to your body and they are secured with a couple of Velcro straps. Annabelle is supposed to be in them pretty much all the time but we can take them off for baths etc . . . and it sure will beat being in casts!

Once the molding was done, the tech packed Annie-Lu's feet in antibiotic gauze etc and then put her back in double-leg casts. We chose pink again. So funny, we have never been "Girls get pink and boys get blue" sort of people but how can you argue with THIS????

The only reason Bella is in casts now is to keep her feet properly positioned until the AFO's are ready (about 2 weeks).

At that time they will call us in to have the casts REMOVED. They will bandage her feet as necessary and put on the AFO's.

By the time Annie gets her AFO's she will have spent half her life in double leg casts and we are very much looking forward to having that episode behind us.

Having seen her feet, I am also eager to have her out of casts so that she will heal faster.

Thank you for all your prayers and support - spinal update to follow . . .