The removal of the cast went pretty well. He let her sit on my lap while he did the sawing and she handled it well. Next came the extraction of the pins . She has two pins in her tibia holding the 3 segments of her tibia together, hopefully you can see them below. I know on my last post everyone couldn't see the pictures. The pins actually come outside of the skin which you can't really tell from the picture and are hooked on the ends so that they can be grabbed on to when the removal part is needed. The outer most edge in this picture is the cast.
After the cast was off he explained "we're really high tech here in this office" (insert sarcastic tone)and he pulled out a pair of needle nose pliers from a drawer, put gauze over top of her pin and then just like that he pulled them right out of her leg. No meds, no...nothing. It sort of took her breath away each time but after that she cried for a moment and then it was over. I took a pic of the pins post removal because the long one was just so big and it just blows me away to think it was buried inside most of her bone and he just pulled it right out of her leg. Amazing. The long one you see is laying next to my hand and is nearly the full length of her leg. The shorter one which came out of the front of her shin also in the picture. I wish I could turn the picture around for you but I'm having computer problems. You get the point though I'm sure.
After the extraction of the pins he made a splint for her out of casting material. She wears that off and on for 2 weeks, has physical therapy and does stretches for 6 weeks and then will be fitted for an AFO or Ankle Foot Orthosis. In every day terms it's a brace that she will wear for an indefinite amount of time....or at least we didn't ask for how long. It will have some sort of lift in it that makes up the difference in her leg length discrepancy until her leg is lengthened in the future and so for now she'll learn to walk with it on.
But perhaps the biggest part for me after all of the painful stuff was over was the looking at her new leg. The surgery changed the look of her leg and while it's supposed to be for the better, it's just different. It's kind of a foreign and yet natural feeling that in a way I'm sad that her leg looks different. Regardless of what needed to be done to give her the ability to walk I loved the way her leg was before because I'm her Mom and Mom's love their babies no matter what. In my eyes her leg with the bump and scar was beautiful just the way it was because that's the way God created her. It was the gift that I was given in the delivery room on that day and it's what I fell in love with from day 1 of her life. Right now I'm kind of quietly mourning that small loss as each day I just look at her now differently shaped leg and study the 3 new scars and 2 new pin scars among all the other differences that her little leg has. I guess I'm learning to love the look of this new gift, and how it reminds me daily of the fact that even though we all have scars of different kinds in our life our Father in Heaven loves us no matter what.
So long Minnesota. We'll be back again hopefully BEFORE the snow falls later this year.
You are such a strong mama- I could never be as graceful as you through all of this! Katelyn sure is blessed! :)
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Thank you dear Suzy!
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