Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Update on Alaina

Hi all, sorry for the delay in updating you on Alaina. It's been 2 weeks post-op now and she is doing great! We headed to New Jersey for Alaina's surgery and we drove. Total time for one way was just about 13 hours! Thankfully we have some family that lives exactly half way in between our two destinations...home and the hospital :) On the Monday before her surgery we had a doctors appointment at 9:30 in the morning and then we had the rest of the day to play. So we decided to head towards the Hudson Bay and visit some places we had only seen in pictures! Ellis Island and Liberty Island. Plus, we got to see the NYC sky line! We had so much fun and so did the girls. Here is a fun photo of the girls sitting at the feet of Lady Liberty!Surgery was scheduled for 7:30am the following day! Yikes, that meant we had to be at the hospital at 5:30am. No fun. The girls did great though and they were thoroughly confused that we woke them up and went outside while it was still dark out, they couldn't quite figure it out! This is Alaina pre-surgery. Getting all checked in and filling out all of those wonderful questionnaires :) She refused the hospital gown, she knows fashion already at 4 years of age!
This is Alaina about 6 hours post-op. She did fairly well, considering. She cried a lot right when she woke up. Once she was able to sit on mom's lap she fell right to sleep. Once moved into the next recovery room she did okay and when we tried to get her dressed she through up all over. So we layed her back down and she slept for another 2 hours. We got bored fast! Addie did so well and of course the nurses kept giving her cookies and juice:) Alaina had to wear the knee immobilizers for 24 hours this is just so she can keep getting a great stretch on her hamstrings and after the 24 hours she needs to wear them during the night time. This is also to retrain her brain and body to not sleep in a fetal position. It's always harder to stretch out in the morning! She also has little casts on her feet. They are a lot like serial casting only closer to her skin. This is to keep her feet in a perfect 90 degree position so she can have great stretching and perfect positioning. These are to be worn for 4 weeks!
Here we are back at home. This is Thursday so 2 days post-op. She now has to take baths in the sink so we don't get her casts wet :) She thinks this is very silly!
Here is a photo I took of her bruises. Can you believe it no sutures, just very tiny pinholes where the "incision" took place.
The results that we have seen so far are just amazing. Alaina is doing things already that she was never able to do before, due to her severe spasticity! For example her sitting has improved 100% she was unable to sit in a straight legged position or get into that sitting position on her own and now she can do both. It is so strange now, when she is in bed she will call for me and I will go into her room and she is sitting up in bed. That has never happened. Another thing Alaina had done was an alcohol block. This was to help her to be able to separate her leg movements. She did a lot of mirror movement. (When one leg moves the other moves with it) She is now able to separate her legs completely and she has started to try and climb stairs another thing that was impossible for her before the surgery!

If you have a child that has spastic CP or know someone that has a child that has it, I highly recommend looking into Dr. Nuzzo's procedure!