back again…

I’ve said this many, many times in this blog. Do not count on anything… things change. We are now 13 months post Owen’s very first surgery from this journey. We are 4+ months beyond his fixator coming off. Yes, we did have the leg fracture… which is a total bummer… but we were even getting beyond that.

Monday night I was giving Owen a bath and I noticed he had what looked like a blister on one of his old pin sites. It seemed a bit odd, and I thought it was probably from having his boot from the fracture on his leg. I almost did nothing. But then I thought about how weird it was that it would form directly on his pin site…

Thanks to the fabulous technology we have today, I took a quick pic on my iphone and texted it to Dr. P’s Physician Assistant (PA). He took one look at the picture and it was all down hill from there.

Apparently, this wound that was healed for 4 months was suddenly becoming infected. The only way to treat it is to surgically go in, and remove the infection, re-opening the pin site. And of course, the only place really to have this done is with Dr. Paley. Owen had no pain, and no fever. It was very localized to that location, but we had no way of knowing if it would spread.

So, my week changed within two hours. Suddenly I was booking air travel and rental cars at 10 pm for the next day. And lets just say that I wasn’t planning on spending an extra $1K this week for sudden travel.

We got down to Florida at 10PM on Tuesday night. We were at pre-op at 6:00 AM (yeah… they always tell you 5:30… but you always end up waiting around for at least an hour… I was beat and needed that extra 1/2 hour of sleep). We still had not even seen Dr. P or the PA’s. The nurses kept asking me what he was having done and I probably sounded a bit silly saying I didn’t know.

The two PA’s came to check out Owen’s leg around 7:30 and they said for sure he would require surgery to remove the infection. They also told me he might need to stay over a night if the infection had gotten into the bone and was serious. awesome. Another thing I wasn’t planning on.

Here is Owen before going into surgery… on “happy meds”…

Owen’s surgery took about an hour to two hours (who knows how long Dr. P actually worked on him… he was running a few surgeries at the time). The PA came out and told me that luckily, it wasn’t as bad as they thought it was going to be. They did have to go in and dig out the tissue, but we didn’t need an IV with antibiotics or have to stay the night. Oral antibiotics would be sufficient. They also had a chance to check out the x-ray of the fracture and they said it was definitely there on the film healing (Boston Children’s had questioned if it was ever there… ). We were told to continue using the boot for another three weeks and then take more x-rays.

So now back at our friends home in Fort Lauderdale. We have to go in for a dressing change tomorrow and then we can start our journey home.

I guess my whole point to this posting is that just when you think you’re done, you’re not. Expect the unexpected. This journey is long, and hard, but hopefully down the line, it will be worth it.

I will also caution; If you are starting this procedure, and financially it is a stretch for you, make sure you are fully aware of what you might need. You might need an extra couple grand set aside for emergency trips to florida. The past two incidents were clearly hard to deal with since our doctor was in Florida. Luckily, for the fracture, we were able to stay locally. That being said, I’m still not 100% satisfied that the local Children’s Hospital took the right steps. There is a bit of Ego busting that goes on between these doctors, and I think that factored in when they looked at one of “Dr. Paley’s” patients. Once I found out how serious this infection could be, we made the decision that only Dr. Paley should be the one to operate on Owen. There’s no way, after this painful year, that we can let an infection set us back. So it’s a tough decision to make… stay local, or make the trip. Doesn’t it kind of suck that our kids medical care comes down to dollars? shouldn’t be that way… but until something fabulous happens with health care, that’s the way it is (I think it’s crazy that you need over $7K for instance in health costs before it is deductible from your taxes)

And here Owen is at dinner… clearly recovered. He can’t walk, because we can’t get his boot on with all the dressings. Hopefully with a dressing change tomorrow, and a little healing, he’ll be up and (not) running again.

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~ by capeKO71 on November 11, 2010.