sunday afternoon

Mason is back in his room, pain medicines are in and football is on.


Surgery went well!  The doc said it looked very clean, so she was able to close it up.  She said there was no more bone loss and no more infection apparent.  She irrigated it an extra time for good measure, put in some antibiotic-laced orthopedic cement beads and sewed him up. 


More good news is that the staph strain is not a Methicillin-resistant strain.  We are now going to cut out all the antibiotics except clindamycin, which he will begin taking orally this afternoon or tomorrow.  If he is able to tolerate that well he will probably go home tomorrow!  Wooohooo!


The plan at this time is to try to keep the staph at bay for a few months, until the bone consolidates in the distraction area.  Once the dr. feels that is at an acceptable level she will go back in and take out the plate and the cement beads.  Once the plate is infected there is no chance of leaving it in place, but we really need to keep it in there as long as possible, otherwise we would have to go back to an external fixator to keep it in place (no stretching, tho) because a cast can't keep it absolutely immobile.


After the plate is out, then he will continue to antibiotic therapy for a few more weeks or a month to make sure the staff is out of his system.  They have tests that we will be doing to monitor the bacterial load and inflammation in his system, so we will be able to react quickly if things don't go as planned.


Mason is ready to be out of here!!  Actually, he said if he didn't have to have surgery it wouldn't be a bad place to be.  Everyone here is soooo nice. I don't know why all hospitals can't do it the same way.  But we are looking forward to being home!