Our second appointment was Thursday march 15, 2012 at gilletts children’s hospital. Anderson
was 17 and ½ months and we were going to schedule his surgery at 18ish months.
This was basically the appointment to make sure everything was going well and
to schedule his surgery. (although i am posting this now i wrote it when we came home that night so that i would remember everything.)
We got to the hospital
a little early and after we got Andersons height and weight checked we were
able to spend some time in the waiting room. Anderson just loves all of the
toys and bright colors. He ran around quite happily until it was time for us to
go to our room. This time there was a little toy car that kids can ride in. He loved it! He sat in it a long time, and he
squealed with delight when his daddy pushed him in it. Although he had to push
him backwards so his feet would not get run over because Anderson did not understand how to move his feet in it yet.
After about a half an
hour we were able to move to our room.
On the way Anderson saw
a bubble blower with fake fish floating and it changes to different colors with
lights. We past it and kept walking to our room. But when we got to our room
Anderson broke away from me and he ran all the way back down the hall as fast
as he could to go back and see those fish. I was carring the diaper bag and a
hot drink and could not keep up with him! He has never moved that fast before!
Yikes! It made me want to get one of those child leash things for this summer!
When we got to the room
we waited only a few minutes and then a nice nurse came in to talk with us and
ask us a few questions. She was our nurse the first time and remembered us.
That was nice.
Only a few short
minutes later and Dr. Lim came in. He is such a friendly down to earth Dr. I
love that he does not make me feel stupid if I ask him questions and he trys to
explain things to us in smart, yet not confusing ways. I appreciate this about
him a lot and it makes me feel very comfortable with him doing surgery on my
child!
Dr. Lim took another
look at Anderson's hands and studied them a little bit making sure that all of
the fingers were growing properly and not becoming tethered as he put it. (When
a finger is attatched to a smaller or larger finger It
can grow crooked or bent forward because of this). Thankfully he did not see any
signs of this happening in Anderson’s fingers.
Dr. Lim then started telling
us how he had just been to a conference and was discussing hand differences
with many other surgeons and experts and they all came to the same conclusion
that it is best to wait as long as possible now to do the hand surgery. So instead of surgery with in the next month like
we originally thought we will be trying the surgery around October when
Anderson is around 24 months.
I was mostly happy to
hear this. I thought it would be nice to have the surgery behind us but it will
be nice not to have to worry about having a cast or stitches during the summer!
We also have some trips planned and I am glad that Anderson will be able to
enjoy them now more then he could with a cast on.
That's very interesting that your surgeon wanted to wait to do the surgery! Our surgeon here in Oklahoma City typically does the surgery around 12 months old, but maybe it's the type of syndactyly Joey has, I'm not sure. I never got to see his x-ray but it was very obvious from birth that his middle and ring finger were fused all the way to the fingertip, and the tiny bones at the fingertip were fused together. His little fingernails were fused together too. So they had to separate the bones at the top and do skin grafts to cover the skin on the 2 separated fingers. Our surgeon said we didn't have to do the surgery; we could wait longer but he suggested doing it before Joey goes to preschool. Well, we were pretty nervous about doing the surgery just 1 week before Joey turned 1 year old! He was already walking around and stumbling a lot! But we did it because we are expecting his little sister in December, and I thought it might be best to do it now so I can give him my full attention throughout all the healing stages, instead of having another baby to take care of as well. So we did the surgery and now everything is great! The cast is off and he is healing very nicely. He really acts completely normal! I wonder if he even remembers that his fingers used to be different.
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