Eiche fam

So we took Namine to her second ortho clinic visit. The first one was a long time ago now, so they wanted to see her again. I can never seem to remember the ortho doctor’s name, maybe it’ll come to me as I type this. Anyway, he explained basically the same thing he explained over a year ago. They plan to “divide” a tendon behind her foot (why not call it what it is? They’re going to cut it.) and remove a bone from the top of her foot. I forgot to ask if there’s a name for this procedure. I’ll have to call the clinic tomorrow and ask.

Removing the tension of the tendon, combined with the bone removal, will allow enough slack in her feet to come forward into a normal resting position. Namine will then need casts first, then later braces. I think there will be different casts for daytime and nighttime, but the doctor didn’t go into great detail.

After Namine’s feet have healed and grown into their new positions, I think the next step is to see if she can stand and support her weight, and then to try her on walking, with the help of a walker or something. But all that is down the road; first we need to see how she does with the surgery itself. There is a chance, partly because of the nature of club feet themselves and partly because Namine’s feet have grown and set themselves into their current position, that her feet will try to go back into their old positions. Further surgery and casting may be necessary at that point. Once again, though, this is at this point conjecture. (How many times have we prepared for worse-case scenarios, only to have God bless Namine with good, fast healing? We pray for more of the same here.)

At the tail end of Namine’s clinic visit, they wanted to take some X-rays of her feet and spine. She did not want to be X-rayed. She hates being X-rayed. Pretty much as soon as I carried her into the room, she started crying. It didn’t help that she was already tired. They took several shots of her feet, to get a clear view of what would have to be done, as well as a shot of her spine. When I have said before that Namine has scoliosis, I’ve been going off of her doctors’ suspicion that she has scoliosis. They have seen evidence of it, but before now I don’t believe they’ve ever taken a direct X-ray of her spine. Well, they have one now. She does have curvature of the spine, but it’s actually just a slight curve. Having done my reading on the subject, and having seen pictures of more extreme cases, I was expecting worse. I consider this another blessing, that her spine is not severely curved, and that she will not need surgery to fix it.