....This past 6 weeks has seemed like it was forever. Although the days, nights & weeks have flown by, looking back it seems like such a long time ago that Maisie had her cast changed! There was problems getting her appointment for her "cast removal" which was then changed to a "cast change" we ended up with two appointments - 6th December in clinic & 8th December on the day unit! We only found out on the 5th December which appointment we had to go to, which was the 6th in clinic!...
....Due to our surgeon leaving there was a lot of problems in sorting Maisie an appointment for anything to happen, resulting in lots of phone calls between us and RLH....
....We were a little early for the clinic appointment, but even though they wern't open, they still let us wait inside because it was freezing, plus we were only 5 minutes before they opened! We saw Maisie's new surgeon - Mr Paterson - he told us that he wanted an x-ray done of Maisie's hip before he could confirm it was being taken off, he wanted to be sure the hip looked good enough to have the cast removed. We were back from x-ray within 30 minutes and only waited a few more minutes before the surgeon came out and said "casts coming off". We had to wait a little while for the plaster technician to come. At first Maisie started crying while he was sawing her cast off, but that soon turned to laughter and her thinking it was tickling her! Once off, Maisie's legs were not in too bad a condition, obviously there was a lot of dry skin, but none of the black hairs like there was last time. We cleaned her up a little & put her nappy on properly and went back to the waiting room to wait to be called by Mr Paterson. We only waited around 5 minutes, at this point Maisie only had her vest on because we didn't see the point in putting her clothes on to have to undress her for the surgeon to check her over. Mr Paterson said that her hip is looking really good, is in a good position, he did some movement checks on her leg and said that the movement is as good as can be expected. There has been some restricted blood flow to her hip bones, but he is not concerned about this and said that it should sort itself out over time, we asked how long it would take, which he said would be months rather than weeks, but he is not concerned about it and will just keep an eye on it at check ups. Also this time Maisie doesn't have to wear the hip abduction splint or any other type of splint/brace, he thinks her hip will do fine without the use of one. We go back in 5 weeks for a repeat x-ray to check that eveything is still doing ok and growing as it should be, he also said that where her hip was subluxed before her 2nd operation there is still some wear on her ball, but that over time it should go back to how its supposed to be!....
....48 hours post cast removal and Maisie started walking with the aid of her dolls pushchair and push along walker, she is growing stronger and stronger as the days are passing, we are all so glad that Maisie is out of her cast in time for Christmas! Now we just have to hope that her hip stays in place and that will be the end of her operations, here's hoping 2012 will be a better year for us all, it has been such a whirlwind year....
Steph xxxx
