Amputee Clinic

We went to an Amputee Clinic put on by our Children's Hospital on Nov. 22nd. It was really nice and very informative. We spoke to another surgeon (this makes 4 in total), a prosthetist (and we finally know how to pronounce that correctly) :), and a physical therapist...along with like four or five nurses or assistants or something. We had quite the full room. The surgeon "absolutely" thought we were doing the right thing by choosing amputation. He said with Dylan's deficiency, lengthening would be a very long, painful process and most likely wouldn't yield as good of a result as the amputation. Most of the information was a lot of what we have already heard. But it was comforting to hear, once again, that we are doing the right thing. He went over the general process of the surgery and answered any little questions we had. He talked about the difference in a Symes amputation and a Boyd amputation and said that Dylan really would be just fine with either one. They will most likely try for a Boyd, but he said that once they get in there they may not be able to do it depending on if they can get his calcaneous to move where it needs to be. If not, they will do a Symes. He also talked about future surgeries and said it's almost inevitable that he will need some minor surgeries here and there in the future as he grows....in regards to his femur and just other "maintenance" surgeries. But hopefully nothing major. The physical therapist said he most likely won't need any long term physical therapy. We'll be shown some things to do with him when the time comes that will help him, but since he's getting it done young and since his strength and development is already so on track, he should be fine and be able to figure things out. The prosthetist said that he will most likely be in his first leg around 6 weeks after surgery....so somewhere around the end of February. That's exciting!

They had a little boy, maybe age 6 or so, come in and visit with us. He showed us his prosthesis and took his leg off for us so we could see his stump. It was nice to be able to see how "normal" it all was for this boy and not that big of a deal. It was comforting.

Overall, it was a great experience. We'll be going to these clinics for most of our follow up stuff in the future, so it was nice to meet the team. Everyone was SO nice and SO caring and Dylan loved them all. He had so much fun crawling between them and talking to all of them and playing with them. It was really cute! These people are going to be our orthopedic family so it was nice to get to know them. :)

Anyway...Bryson and I were talking about how crazy it is that it's just a little over a month away!!! Eek! So exciting and terrifying all at the same time. :) Good thing we have birthdays and Christmas in between now and then to help us get our minds off of it for a little bit.

We have one more appointment with our original surgeon, Dr. E, on Dec. 7th. And then we'll be meeting with the prosthetist at some point before surgery to try to get a molding of Dylan's foot. And then I think that's it before surgery day.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! It's been a crazy, hard, emotional, trying, but fun and blessed year for us! We have SO much to be thankful for.

OH...and guess what?? Dylan will be ONE on Thursday!!! I can't believe it. He's growing up too fast!