Bad Mama!

I have a confession to make..... It's pretty awful.....




I don't want to take a shower today. :-)





No, I am not a fan of funk. You see, it's just too cold! The idea of drippy, chilly, wet hair is just too repulsive.


Oh well, I'm off to do the right thing.

Hooray For Dr. Aiona!

Well, Dr. Aiona was able to do Mark's casting yesterday! Whew, what a relief!! He examined the feet and immediately started shaking his head, and recommended we wait till the fat foot is ready to do the tenotomy. One of the casts had slipped a fair amount the day before the appointment, so it was obviously not ready for the surgery. The other cast looked like it had slipped last week BEFORE we left the appointment, so I was SUPER glad that Dr. Aiona was back in business. He very carefully and gently moved the feet to the right position, and casted them up nicely. They had me stick around a bit to make sure that the feet hadn't slipped while the casts set up.

Dr. Aiona also said that we could get a Rx for the Mitchell shoes & bar, which is an answer to prayer. They seem to be the easiest and most effective brace around nowadays.

Sooo...... No surgery next week, but we would much rather go slowly and get it right than rush and have to recast later. and I feel confident in Dr. Aiona.

It is strange what a HUGE difference having the right Dr. and support team can make. Last week the nurse who removed Mark's casts scraped his leg, (not a big deal) so we were very glad to see the amazingly-good-at-his-job Juan Carlos back on duty. He removed the old casts, and assisted Dr. Aiona with the casting. Mark actually slept through about 1/2 of the casting process, and was MUCH happier after we got home. Last week he was crying when he moved his legs after we got home, but I thought that the cause was the ingrown nail, perhaps it was the slipped casting.

The picture is the stiff/fat/unhappy foot. It looked much closer in size to the other foot this time.

Fat Feet!

The top pic is Feb 5th, after 2 weeks of casts... :-) Such a change!

Mark's feet are continuing to be casted, his last CORRECTIVE set will be put on tomorrow, the 25th of Feb. He will then have surgery on March 4th ......."bilateral percutaneous tendo-achilles lengthenings" (fancy talk for snipping his Achilles tendons on both feet.) This will be followed by another casting, but this will be a HOLDING cast, just to hold his feet in position while the surgery site heals, about 3 weeks. He will then be wearing shoes attached to a bar for a while...

One of his feet is a bit worse (less flexible) than the other, and the last time we switched casts, there was an ingrown toenail and a large bruise on that foot. These were a bit worrying to me, but the real thing keeping me a bit stressed is the difference between his feet. One is a lot shorter and fatter than the other, like a bound foot sort of (not as bad as that) but the same area seems to be thicker.... I'm going to be bugging the Dr. about it more this time, when I pointed it out last time he just said oh, yeah it is fatter, and left.

I am super thankful for the Shriners clinic, especially since there is no charge..but it has been a little weird. Dr. Aiona, who is one of the recommended Ponseti method guys, is our Dr, BUT, the 2nd time we went in, he had been in an accident... His arm is all messed up, and has been in a cast since, so another Dr. has been casting Mark. Dr. Aiona pops his head in for about 2 seconds, but we don't really get to ask questions. The other Doctor is a nice guy, but he's always got another person shadowing him, at the last appt there were 3 people there, including a Dr. from Australia, listening to the running commentary by the main Doctor explaining how to perform the casting. So, I need to be MUCH more aggressive in pursuing answers before the casting starts, since the Dr's aren't exactly sticking around to chat afterward....

Perhaps the tenotomy will help his short foot straighten out a bit...

Wordless Wednesday...

Almost wordless...

Quiet down bloggers, forums go to sleep,
I'm enjoying my baby, 'cause babies don't keep.

(Yes, I know, too much baby, not enough blog content.. I'll try to get back to that later. )

Wordless Wednesday...