Namine was coughing quite a bit after she woke up, so we took her to the doctor this morning. Two nights ago, she was coughing a bit before she fell into a deeper sleep. Last night, however, she didn’t cough at all. I had hoped that whatever had been giving her the sniffles had passed. Apparently, that is not the case.
Having visited the doctor, Namine is now on yet another antibiotic. She was already on one from the hospital, but her pediatrician wants to keep as far ahead of sickness as possible. Normally, sickness would postpone any upcoming surgeries, but the foot repairs cannot be postponed. Due to Namine’s age, her feet would settle into whatever current shape they happen to be in, if we were to stop the process now. Then, the ortho doc would have to start over. As you might imagine, we’d like to avoid that at all costs.
I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Whenever Namine goes into the hospital, she gets sick. It doesn’t seem to matter – if she’s going in because she’s already sick, she gets worse before she gets better. If it’s surgery, there are almost always complications because she gets sick on top of the already difficult recovery.
But of course doctors don’t believe us when we say that Namine will get sick, she will end up staying longer than they anticipate. It was fortunate that Namine only had to stay one night this past week, and if we’re lucky, she’ll only have to stay a single night for her future appointments, as well.
From this point on, I suppose I can’t really call them surgeries. Namine no longer needs anything invasive done to her feet; last week was the last (God willing). No, from this point on, it’s just a matter of torquing her feet. “Turn,” I think, is not as evocative a word as I want. “Torque” is better, and that’s what the ortho doctor is doing.
The trick, ultimately, is keeping profusion of her feet good while bringing her feet up to a normal position. The arteries in her feet are smaller and weaker due to the caudal regression, and the ones on the inside of her feet need to stretch in order to get enough blood to her toes. So far, so good, but we have a long way to go.
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