Post op visit Dec 2017

Got to Philly yesterday and we're lucky again to get a room at the Ronald McDonald house! We saw our dear friend Katee!

This morning we got up bright and early to get the cast off. 

The saw scares her pretty significantly at this point so it was a rough hour Miss Dylann getting it off. But look at those beautiful straight feetsies!

Next we tried on our new braces the got a hip X-ray. Then we waited to see our MD. He said her hip looks great. It's healing  nicely and she was given clearance to weight bare in braces!!

He said her right knee responded so well to the procedure that her leg is almost straight. He plans to take the plate blocking the growth plate out in 4 months!!  She does still complain it hurts.

The MD had her do some standing to see how the braces fit and how things were looking. The only sad part to hear is she has to sleep in these tall braces for years to keep her knee and feet in position. That's going to be a fight.

She had some soreness tonight so stayed in her wheelchair most of the night. Finally she agreed right before bed to let me soak her feet and cut her nails. She then asked to walk and managed to walk like 10 steps independently again!! She continues to amaze me everyday!!!

Surgery Day Philly Nov 2017

I realized that I posted all Dylanns updates on Facebook but not on here. I'm hoping someday Dylann will find it helpful to look back on all these events so decided to summarize how things went.

Surgery was on 11/1. She had a left hip osteotomy, right knee 8plates, removal of left femur plates, bilateral knee tendon releases, and bilateral Achilles tenotomies. The surgery took 4 hours but with all the prep and other things, about 8 from when she went back to when we saw her in ICU. She got an epidural for pain management so spent the first two days in the ICU. He said the surgery went great, her left knee straightened with just tendon releases and then the right improved a ton as well but did need the plates.

First day went just fine. She mostly slept and pain seemed controlled for the most part. 

Second evening she had a pretty large meltdown that took Valium and three of us to calm her. She was upset we couldn't hold her and complained about her knee. Her O2 plummeted from there so she had to spend the night on oxygen.

Friday they worked to get her off the epidural and she had intermittent pain. We moved out of ICU onto the 5th floor in a room for 4. First night we didn't have a roommate. Her O2 still was falling too low so she spent another night On the o2. She also started getting fevers. 

Saturday we got her off the oxygen but her fevers kept happening once a day and we couldn't leave until fever free of 24 hours. We were finally discharged Monday at 12 just in time to catch our 4pm flight. The plane ride went really well!