Month: July 2010

Monday Sadie got her walking cast off, got still more X-rays, and was allowed to leave cast-free. Yay!

She faces 10 days of taking it easier than normal – walking on even surfaces, no roughhousing, nothing athletic, going in a pool if she wants – and then we’re really done. Unless she remains sore and stiff, in which case the doctor wants her back to see him.

It took her over a week in the walking cast before she started being comfortable getting around by herself, and by the end she was just walking away, just with an odd gait due to the cast. Now it’s her ankle and lower leg, but she is already making an effort, and now understands it needs to be exercised to be back to normal.

What a relief! It’ll be just a month from start of school when she is all the way to normal.

The weird thing is the hair.

Apparently it’s normal if not universal to experience heavy hair growth under and around a cast. From above where the original cast ended down to her shin is a mat of fur that would do my leg proud. I’d thought her knee was inexplicably dirty , then it became clear with the worst of it visible after the cast was gone.

She got the genes for hair to begin with, and of course the cast covers it and it does tend to be darker. But it’s actually thicker, dramatically. From what I found online, the cast irritates the skin under it, which stimulates blood flow, which stimulates hair growth. Never heard of that!

[I originally started this post a week ago last Monday, July 12, got interrupted, never finished and posted it, and so here it is. Not bothering to edit the timeframe up to the point I’ll indicate I am adding to it.]

Took Sadie to get her three week cast off today. She was freaked out by the saw, so much she took most of the way through subsequent X-rays to get over it.

The X-rays showed it healed well, as expected.

What I didn’t know to expect of the followup was a “walking cast.” For 2 weeks she has another cast, but this time starting below the knee, going well onto the foot, so her knee can bend and she can walk. She also has a “boot” to strap on, rather than walking on cast and toes.

Today I had to continue carrying her. She can try walking tomorrow.

After the two weeks, it comes off and she really should be done. In the meantime, it’ll be tough

[Continuing from where I left off, and updating to what’s current.]

I think I was going to say it would be tough because we had a pool party to go to, and she would be unable to swim, or maybe it would be tough because we were going to dental appointments in Boston on the 14th, which had I realized she would get the additional cast I might have postponed.

The pool actually helped derail her funk, in which Sadie wouldn’t even try to walk, and was happy to sit and do passive things. She ended up on the side of the pool, cast covered in a towel, other leg dangling or a hand reaching in water to play with it, and playing with cousins. She got so happily soaked, she might as well have been in the pool. But the cast stayed safe!

It still took until yesterday for Sadie to get up and walk around the apartment by herself. She found it painful, stiff and – it still is – awkward. At least this means I am freed up extensively, and the transition won’t be so tough Monday.

As for the dental appointment, because she couldn’t get around readily, and there was some distance involved, I used the umbrella stroller, which works well as a wheelchair of sorts. We were very late getting into the place in Boston, but they squeezed us in before breaking for lunch. It’s very efficient and the people there are awesome. All three kids got a clean bill of tooth, and we don’t have to do this again for six months, assuming nobody develops a problem. Valerie is the best one at dealing with the dentistry, amazingly, because they are her heroes. When I took her there with a lost filling and some pain, they patched it up and it demonstrably didn’t hurt anymore. She raved to her mother that the dentist made it better. Sadie had to be big but wasn’t happy, since Henry had to be held and freaked a bit. Though even he is used to opening wide for having me brush his teeth, so he did pretty well. That and he’s so darn bright and good at following instructions, when he’s not being intentionally stubborn.

But back to the leg… We go Monday, July 26, get the cast off, and from what they said, that is that, not even yet another set of X-rays. As I was saying with the title, the walking cast seemed like kind of an “and we mean it” thing to be sure all was healed and well, and protected with an exoskeleton for a bit as it got used to being in use again.

Or so I hope!

Tomorrow morning I take Sadie to get her cast off and get X-rays.

Presumably that will be it, and we will return home triumphantly cast-free after three weeks. Via some errands. And a trip by my mother’s house, if I leave the other kids there. Among whatever else, I plan to use it as the day Sadie gets to shop for new shoes. Hers are beat, to the point of getting holes in the toes, and I hadn’t been able to find her presumed size (next one up) in that model on a couple casual looks. This way she can participate and try them on, so if they don’t have size 13, maybe we can try the next size up, which is apparently size 1. Sizing is weird.

She may not care that much, but I think it’ll be nice for her to be able to bathe normally, and not just because it’s a pain for me. At least that is infrequent, compared to carrying her to the bathroom or between locations in the house. It’s been helpful that she entertains herself in place easily.

It’ll also be nice for her to be able to swim, or at least go in the wading pool at Grandma’s. We have a couple pending possible pool visits. Yay!

Anyway, I’ll update here with the outcome after we are home tomorrow…