baby steps

Mason's visit today with the orthopedic dr was good.   He is making bone, and there are no signs of infection in the area where it was last time.  This is super good news, because there is a giant metal plate in there, pretty close to the same position as the one we had to take out after the last infection.

You can see in this x-ray just how far his ulna was pulled apart to realign things: (click on it to enlarge)

I can better understand how fragile the union really is now!  Thank goodness for that big honkin' plate! It's nearly 6" long,  and is holding that bone together nice and straight.

Mason has been released to some light drumming - nothing crazy.  He is allowed to lift things up to as heavy as a large package of toilet paper, and has a new RX for physical therapy that will include resistance bands.  His dr nearly fell over when he asked her if he could play lacrosse this spring. :)

So things are headed in the right direction.  Time for more physical therapy!

these are the times....

I may have mentioned this previously, but.....physical therapy SUCKS.

That's a word I hate, and ask my children not to use, but I have to admit it applies pretty well here.  It really does suck the cheerfulness and the optimism right out of you.  It's such hard, menial work for such small results.

Mason's been at it for a couple of weeks, and he has made progress.  It is not the high profile stuff a teenager wants to see, but it is significant. One example: his ring finger and pinky finger wouldn't straighten right after surgery, now they do.  But there is so much more that has to be addressed, stemming back to issues in play before this last surgery took place.  It is going to be a long and long and long haul.  sigh.

He goes back to see the ortho surgeon Wednesday 12/21.  Will update after that visit.

2 weeks after

First off, I have to say:  O.M.G. to the long day we spent at the doctor's today!!  If anyone out there is trying to decide which field of medicine to practice, let me give you advice:  pediatric ANYTHING!!  There are way too many patients, and not enough physicians!!  You seriously have to get into the hospital/doctor office "zen" before you head off to a double-header appointment like we did today.

The visit to the Infectious Disease folks was pretty uneventful.Well, I guess I could backtrack and say that first we had to go to orthopedic office to have the cast removed so the ID doctor could look at it.  That took a little while, then there was some confusion on if it was ok to take the cast off, etc.  But in the end the prognosis was good, and we DID NOT have to renew the prescription for the clindamycin! Now *that* is some happy news in itself!  So two more days of the brain fogger, and then Mason will be medicine free (except for pain killer as needed--more on that later).  Of course they had to sneak in a flu shot before we got out of there.  Mason was supposed to get one before surgery, then they decided it would be better to wait until after.  So now he has a sore right arm too. :)

After that visit we had a break for lunch - Town Topic burgers were on the agenda.  Mason at a triple, then a double.  So his appetite is back, obviously.

The orthopedic appointment after lunch was the grueling one....because of the long wait. ugh ugh ugh.  But, I guess it was worth it, because the doc said everything looks "good".   Keeping in mind that good is relative, see below:

To me it looks kinda like someone held a hot poker on him in a few spots....the skin has died a few places due to the extreme stretching it had to do - about an inch.  If the skin looks like that (the doc assured us it will slough off and heal just fine) you can only imagine what the tendons and muscles inside his arm are feeling like!! Yikes!  He still has quite a lot of swelling in that elbow area, and it is pretty bruised and tender.  His incision, however, is quite "normal" looking - not much swelling, not tender, not red. Yay for that!  The surgeon excised the old incision with all the scarring (due to the infection), so the new incision will end up looking nicer, too.  

So they took the cast and modified it to be a half cast, like a shell for his bent arm to rest in, held on by ace bandage.  This is temporary until his OT makes him a splint to wear.  That's right - he already got a prescription to start occupational therapy. Gasp!  No rest for the weary!  I will call tomorrow and get things set up.  There will be no weight bearing exercise for awhile, mainly just stretching type stuff.  His muscles are really tight after being pulled apart about an inch, but the doc is optimistic that he is going to get more motion than he had before.  We may have to use some of those pain pills after the therapy starts. But of course the best part of losing the cast is...showers!!  No more press-n-seal, no more washing hair in the sink! 

Half cast - before they put new cushion in it.

There were no x-rays today - I was kind of surprised, but frankly could not have handled one more thing at that hospital anyway.  His next orthopedic appointment is December 21, and I'm sure by that time they'll x-ray to make sure that bone graft is taking hold.  Mason's hip is still pretty uncomfortable when he goes up and down stairs or is on his feet very long.  I could have sworn I heard them say it would hurt "for a few days", but today the doc said it often takes a month or so to heal up and start feeling better. I must have been thinking of the needle extraction of bone marrow rather than the chiseling of a hunk of bone.....or maybe thinking about how much I like vanilla.   Oh well....it is the "gold standard" for bone grafts - nothing but the best for the G man!