The explanation: When Keira was born, we discovered she had a couple of toes on each foot that were syndactyly or "webbed". She started recognizing her "silly toes" pretty early on so we visited with a podiatrist when she was 2 years old to get his opinion. He was pretty neutral, but he suggested, if we decided to proceed with surgery, waiting at least until she was 3 since the procedure required general anesthesia. After lots of discussion and a couple of more visits with this podiatrist, we decided to go ahead and have them "snipped". It's much more than that, though. Once they snip through the skin, they then take skin from just below the ankle bone (where there's extra skin) and graft it between the toes to form a separation. Many stitches are involved with such a procedure.
This occurred last week. Keira has been such a trooper and the doctor/nurses continue to compliment her on being such an amazing patient. No crying, complaining...nothing!
The confession: I'm ready for this recovery to be over! Poor Keira has been crawling around for the last few days for fear of walking too much on her stitches. I have had to do more lifting than I probably should since the girl weighs at least 40 lbs! But, we feel lucky that if it had to happen to anyone, Keira was the best candidate. She understands very well that the longer she stays off her feet, the faster she will heal. She doesn't mind crawling around to get to toys and bedrooms. In fact, she sometimes thinks this is super fun! It amazes me how little pain she has had to endure. Even in the first 2 days, when the pain is supposed to be basically unbearable, she was going 6 hours or more without pain medication. What a tough little girl!
The surgery: Here is my sweet "pink" girl ready for surgery. She even got to keep the blanket and pillowcase! Boy was she excited about that!
Here she is post surgery. She was excited to get a purple slushy. You'll notice her hand is wrapped to match her feet - it was to keep the IV in place. Her feet had to stay wrapped for 6 days so to avoid infection.
Since we knew this was happening before school was out for the year, we asked Keira's teacher if we could celebrate her birthday early. I'm so glad she did! Keira has been talking about her birthday at school for months. She loved all that attention! The only problem is she thinks she's 4 already when she still has a couple weeks until her actual birthday. What a cute birthday princess.
These are the treats we brought for her to share with her friends. I feel like the eyes are spooky, but I didn't realize my "googly" eyes were short a few (try 32) and they were the wrong size until 9:45 pm the night before. Oh well. We improvised. I doubt the kids care as much as I do :)
Back to recovery...we visited with the doctor yesterday and he took off the cast-like bandages from her feet. Now we re-wrap just her toes/stitches every couple of days. She's allowed to walk a little bit more, but her ankle stitches bother her if she does.
Our sweet friend, Annie-Kate, often plays with the girls because she absolutely adores them (can't blame her) and of course, the girls LOVE her too. So Annie-Kate calls the day after surgery and asks if the girls could play. I explained to her Keira's state of immobility and said she'd try again next week. A couple hours later, we get another call, asking if she and a friend could bring Keira some muffins. How sweet is she! Tender mercies all around :)
We're all getting a little cabin fever over here...wish us luck!
4 comments:
:( sad. It's SO hard when kids are sick like that. You want to be compassionate, but I swear the parents suffer more than the kids sometimes!
I hope that Kiera feels better soon!
Glad she is healing so well & hasn't experienced severe pain like expected. She is a cute little patient. :)
She is a little trooper. Seems sweet in spite of it all. Hang in there she appreciates and will remember all you do
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