What to Expect - Mama’s Point of View
On October 18th 2006 Natalie was scheduled for a procedure called medial open reduction. This surgery would require the doctors to remove the muscles attached to the top of her femur. They would then place the leg in the proper position with her hip. See, infants do not have the ball at the top of the femur to hold the leg or hip in place. This part of the joint develops later around 18 moths old. The muscles are then reattached to the leg in the proper position. The Spica Cast is then placed on the child to hold the hip in the best position for the growth and strength of the newly attached muscles.
The surgery itself was not the difficult part to handle. Though there was a lot of swelling and bruising around the incision. It was simply the fact that she could no longer move the entire lower half of her body. She had just learned to crawl, pull up, and walk along the furniture two weeks prior to the surgery. It broke my heart for her to have that taken away, but I was extremely grateful that this surgery would give her a chance for a more normal life. If she had not had the surgery she would not have been able to walk with out having pain for the rest of her life.
The doctors told us that she would learn to adapt to being in the cast, but that it would be us, the parents, who would be mad at the world for the next three months. They were so very right. It only took Natalie about 10 days to figure out how to pull herself around in the very heavy cast. I think that she would have figured it out sooner had she not been sick with a stomach virus for the first two weeks. Something that is very important to remember: do not let anyone who has had a stomach virus around your child after being placed in a Spica Cast. This will make it very difficult to care for them because of trying to keep the cast dry and clean. It is pretty much impossible if they develop a stomach virus.