When you can't trace His hand...

"When you can't trace His hand, trust His heart".

I can't trace His hand more than I can usually. I guess that is the point of faith. Dillon's ortho called me on Thursday. He said after looking at the X-ray with Dillon's legs pointed in the position he needed them in, he can see the surgery we were planning won't work. He has to do the boney surgery I told you all about in a previous post. It is where they will cut his leg bone apart, re angle the bone, use screws and plates to put it back together, as well as cut the tendon. He has to do this because Dillon's bone has been misangled by his muscle tone. The doctor told me that he is only treating symptoms, that the cause is his brain and there is nothing we can do about that. At least he is honest with me!

The doctor wants to do both legs at once because the right legs is not normal either and it will need to be done eventually. The only good news to this is that he won't need the cast afterwards because the plates act as the cast to keep everything in place.

However, the bad news is the doctor said he will need this done again. If Dillon were 10 years old his legs would be mostly done growing, but since he is only 3 his legs will keep growing and will grow the way the brain wants them to not the way the doctor wants them to. This is a very common issues in children with CP like Dillon, however he is young to be needing this drastic of surgery. I think the Doctor said they normally don't need this until 7 to 8 years old.

I couldn't get Dillon off his fish oil in time for surgery next week. He has to be off of it for 2 weeks and they only told me the day before he had to be off. If I just remove it he will have a lot of seizures, I have to have the neuro team make adjustments to the diet. Therefore we will be putting it off. The doctor said this is perfectly fine - that he would plan to do it in August or September with no consequence to Dillon. However, we cannot wait years to do it or his hip will get arthritis.

The doctor is also going to coordinate with urology to fix Dillon's double hernia and undecended testicles all at the same time, so that is good. The hips will take 1.5 hours each, the hernia about 45 minutes so all together he will be undergoing about 5 hours of surgery probably in August or September. And of course they will be sending him to the PICU to recover.

"When you can't trace His hand, trust His heart"

Pre-Op for Hip surgery

We had our pre-op for hip surgery today. The doctor normally likes to read the X-ray while the family is still in the anesthesia appointment, but he wasn't able to be in today so he will call me Monday with how the X-ray compares to the last one. The pre-op appointment went like they all do... nothing too exciting. They will reserve him a bed on the PICU for after the surgery. I have to call his neuro tomorrow and figure out how we will adjust the diet because he is not allowed his fish oil for 2 weeks before surgery. I believe fish oil thins the blood so he can't have it, but without it his diet loses a lot of fat and will cause more seizures.

However, I think we will still end up putting off the surgery until after the baby is born so that the stretches we are doing, the chiropractor and the acupuncturist can have a few months to see if they can help his body without surgery. Especially since this is a surgery the doctor told me will have to be done multiple times. The doctor had told me there was no rush in getting it done, so if there is a hope to help him without surgery/casting Josiah and I feel we must give it a chance! (If we dely the surgery I do not have to have this appointment again, they will just call me to go over any changes - so by going now even though we will probably put it off for a few months I did not waste anyone's time.)

Dillon's leg has made improvements from what i can see. He now allows us to stretch him as much as we can without his heart rate going up, him fighting us, or meeting resistance. He allows us to put him into a froggy position on his belly and he will keep it for up to an hour. And his nurse said last night he had his left knee bent and the ankle on top of the right leg. All these are improvements from a few weeks ago!!! So I am really praying that these improvements mean the hip is moving back into place! PLEASE continue to pray that this will be the case! Dillon and I thank you for your prayers! :o)