Home from the Hospital...finally

Jack's surgery was Wednesday and was originally scheduled to last about an hour. He was having small metal plates screwed to the bones in his knees, in order to slowth the growth in the front on his leg, create a wedge-shaped growth plate and eventually straighten his knees out. Seems kind of weird and it's not the usual way these plates are used, but the doctor at Shriners' is very confident this will work. Jack's knees do not extend fully and after a bunch of tests it was determined that he was born missing part of his quadriceps muscle, a very unusual condition. Luckily it only affects that one set of muscles and not others on his body anywhere.

Anyway, two hours into the surgery, the nurse came out to tell us that one leg was done. After 3 1/2 hours they were finally finished and the surgeon came out to say that Jack's kneecaps were not quite in the right place so they had to do more extensive surgery than originally planned, with longer incisions (he has 4 total - one each side of each knee). His legs are wrapped from ankle to upper thigh in ace bandages and immobilizers. Because of the amount of pain he has been having, we stayed at the hospital for 4 days and came home just today. Shriners is wonderful and they took great care of him. They just opened a whole new wing the day he was admitted and we were the first residents in a beautiful new room (except there was no hot water in the shower for Mommy and the TV didn't work the last day). He is unable to walk for now and has his first PT appointment on Tuesday. We are hoping that being home will get him motivated to start walking with his walker--he should be going back to school in a few days with it.

He is definitely not one of those kids who is quiet about being in pain--the whole wing knew it when he was hurting, poor kid. He's still on quite a bit of pain meds now but if his legs get moved around too much, there is a lot of high-pitched screaming and crying. It's so sad, because he really, really wants his legs to be straight, but because the surgery was so much more extensive, the pain is also. None of us were quite prepared for this.

At the same time this was all happening, my mom fell down an entire flight of stairs at their house. She has serious medical problems anyway, but thankfully did not actually break any bones. She will be laid up for quite a while. Luckily my sister was able to go to be with her in the hospital while I was at the hospital with Jack. What a week! Time for everyone to get better!