I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping everyone informed about how Lydia's doing post-surgery. We've had a couple of minor bumps in the road, but she's doing GREAT!
She spent most of our first week home from the hospital on the couch, but we did manage to make it to her class field trip at Hee Haw Farms. She was SO happy to see her teacher and classmates.
There were lots of little animals to pet, and they let all the kids pick out a pumpkin. Lydia loved the newborn baby pigs we saw, and there was even a cow that was in labor. I think I can go the rest of my life without seeing that again, but it was...interesting. She was a little tired by the end, but I'm so glad we made the effort to go. (Even though pushing her wheelchair through the ridiculously long and bumpy corn maze nearly put me into labor.) ;) It was a beautiful day, and we had lots of fun.
Lydia started back at school about a week and a half after her surgery. She was SO happy to be back. A couple of days later, we found a large blister on the back of one of her heels. I couldn't figure out WHAT could have caused it since she'd just been sitting around, but Randall informed me that it was a bedsore. He figured out a way to finagle her Spongebob pillow so that it wasn't touching her heels all night, and we were really careful to protect the blister and keep it from bursting. The other heel had a small bedsore as well, but it never got very bad. I was really upset about the situation because Lydia has scraped the top of her feet a couple of times in the past, and it's taken FOREVER to heal. I don't know if it has to do with poor circulation, or what, but I absolutely HATE when she gets sores on her feet. Fortunately, the blister hardened up pretty quickly so we don't have to worry about popping it, and it's now slowly starting to shrink (I think).
Last weekend, Lydia started having pain in her "leg." (She gets pains pretty frequently, and I sometimes wonder if her sensory issues make her think the pain is coming from a different area than it actually IS.) It kind of came and went so I figured I'd just mention it to the doctor when I saw him at our appointment on Tuesday. Saturday night, Randall and I were heading out on a date with Jackie and Casey and she told me it was hurting again. I asked if she thought we should stay home, but she said she wanted to go to Grandpa and Grandma's. I figured it would pass so we gave her some Tylenol and headed out for our date. Later that night, Randall's parents let us know that she was saying her stomach hurt now, and we decided to come home early from the BYU game.
I was happy to leave because it was FREEZING!
Did you know they don't shovel the stadium seats/aisles after a snowstorm? You just have to slip and slide your way over to your seat and clean them off yourselves. Then sit for the whole game with your feet in a pile of snow. Kinda lame. It was still a fun date, though!
That night, I had Lydia sleep in my bed with me, and she woke up about a zillion times. The next morning she seemed to be doing better, but I called several of her doctors anyway. She continued to feel pain throughout the day, so we headed to Primary Children's Emergency Room. They were very thorough and did a CT scan, urinalysis, and blood work. It took almost 2 hours to get all the liquid down that they needed for the CT scan, and then she threw up immediately after drinking the last little bit of apple juice. Fortunately, they thought the CT scan would still work, so we didn't have to make her drink any more. After 5 hours at the Emergency Room we were able to rule out appendicitis, and an infected shunt. She DID have a kidney infection, and an excess of fluid from her shunt. They let us go home with antibiotics and check in with my pediatrician the next day to make sure the shunt wasn't malfunctioning. The next day she was doing MUCH better and we determined that her shunt was working fine. (Yay for not having to go through ANOTHER surgery to repair her shunt right now!)
We went to our scheduled appointment with her orthopaedic surgeon on Tuesday and got cleared to put weight on her legs again. (HOORAY!) She's doing great, and I have to keep reminding her not to overdo it, because she's been having so much fun walking around again. She's also thrilled to be done with the infamous Spongebob pillow at night. I'm so happy to see my little cutie getting around again and so thrilled with the results we saw in the side-by-side X-rays. We have another appointment in 2 months to make sure that her bone is still developing, but everything looks GREAT. We've been so blessed throughout all this and I'm so grateful that Lydia is such a tough cookie. She keeps asking when she "gets to" have surgery again, and I keep telling her, "Hopefully NEVER!"
p.s. Lydia also got Student of the Month this month. Go Lydia!
