Another Syndactyly Blog That Helped Me

I thought it would be good to share a blog that helped me  a lot through this process. Irina is the mom of two very beautiful girls. She shared her families own story of syndactally in a very meaningful way.
Actually her blog inspired my own. I thought that if she helped so many people with her blog then I could maybe help someone with one of my own.

The more information that is easy to find on the syndactyly topic makes it feel like you can get through it. It helped me to read such a personal blog because i knew that they were real people going through what we were going through.

http://syndactyly.wordpress.com

Life after surgery (the first week)

The adjustment to home went better then I expected. It really did help to stay that first night in the hospital and let them worry about all of his pain and vitals and things that I would have been concerned about. By the time we got home it was time for him to take a nap. So we laid him right down. He slept for a long time. For the rest of the night we just tried to play and distract him. It was nice that for the most part his pain meds were helping.
The first few nights he did wake up at night after the bedtime dose of meds had worn off. I would just give him his next dose and hold him in the rocking chair in his room and he would be out with in a few minutes.

Before I had been concerned with trying to keep his pain under control. However, I could tell by the time for a new dose he really needed one. Especially the first few days. I thought that because he is two years old, it would be hard to tell if he was in pain or just sad. but I could always tell the difference. Thankfully his pain meds helped him feel mostly normal and he was back to his very active self in no time. The week before my mom had actually had hernia surgery and she said she was not feeling good until about day 4 and so that helped me know a rough time period and not end the pain meds too soon. In fact, we kept him on meds longer than 4 days. (Not as many doses, it helped to kinda slowly cut back.)

We were able to give him some baths with a little work. I would take one of Andy's socks and pull it on over Anderson's cast. Then I would roll over the top so that it was bunched around the top of the cast. I figured it would soak up any water that might get past the bags. We would take two shopping bags and tie them on one over the other. 

Then we filled the bath tub up only about two inches . (His skin graft site is in his groin area and they said it can get wet but not soak in water.)  Andy washes his body while I would try to hold his cast arm up and out of the water.
It has worked pretty well. Anderson just loves baths so he actually does not even mind that I was holding his arm up that whole time. 

We heard alot of "cast off!" the first few days and it was great when we could get out and do things.

To keep Anderson busy after his surgery and to distract him from his new cast, we went to the zoo for a few hours on Friday.

I see monkeys!

Is there a tiger in there?

I love giraffes!

He was thrilled that Thomas was there too.