Mia experiences a setback!

As I mentioned, two weeks ago Mia got her cast off. Life was good! She was nice and flexible, and she had a couple of very good days at school prior to Spring Break. Then, on Saturday (the 13th), I noticed that her incision was open. And when I say open, I don't mean a slight opening, I mean a fairly big hole. When I can see the tendons inside her leg, I consider that a fairly big hole. It didn't seem to bug her too much except when I actually moved her, which was nice, but I still wasn't sure what to do. I called the hospital and spoke to the on-call doctor (her surgeon was in Honduras). He said that I should soak some gauze in sterile water, pack the wound a bit, and then put a dry piece of gauze over it. I got distilled water because, as it turns out, one needs a prescription for sterile water. I got the distinct impression that the doctor and her surgeon's nurse (who called me later in the day) didn't quite believe that the hole was as big as I said it was. I've been dealing with Mia for almost seven years. I'd like to think I don't panic. This hole, however, was a bit freaky.

So we did that for a few days. We kept looking at it and it didn't seem to be infected, so we kept changing the gauze twice a day and hoping it would heal. I took her to her regular doctor a week ago just to make sure I was putting the gauze on correctly. He said I should call the hospital back and have someone look at it, because he didn't want the hole to get any deeper. The deeper it gets the greater the risk for infection, so he wanted to make sure they understood the issue. I called the hospital again and again got the idea they thought I was unnecessarily freaking out. But they made an appointment for the next day to check her out.

So I took her to the office and a physician's assistant looked at her (she was a very nice lady, but I must point out that her last name was - no lie - Stufflebeam). She was taken aback by the severity of it, which kind of confirmed my suspicions that they thought I was freaking out. She called Mia's surgeon's partner, who said to keep doing what we were doing, at least through the weekend until her surgeon came back and could look at it. It still wasn't infected, and Mia was handling it fine - even when we moved her, which is when it hurt the most, she wasn't screaming as much as I thought she would (or I would if I had a hole in the hinge between my leg and my groin). So we waited through the weekend.

I called the doctor on Monday and spoke to his nurse, who told me she'd ask him what he wanted to do. She called back yesterday and scheduled an appointment for today - he obviously wanted to check it out. Today he decided to be a bit more aggressive with it. He's going to drain it on Saturday and, if it's not infected inside the wound, stitch it back up. I was hoping he would do that, because we haven't been able to stretch her or do any therapy since the cast came off, and I fear that her muscles are going to start tightening up again. Simply letting the wound heal by putting gauze on it would take a long time, I imagine, and who knows how her muscles would be afterward. I'm sure she'll have to wait to do therapy if he stitches her up, but I'm sure it will be a shorter healing time than letting it heal by itself.

I hope it goes well on Saturday. I just get so frustrated with the fact that Mia just keeps coming close to being at full health and strength and then something else puts her back. It's been well over a year since she's had a full coterie of physical therapy, even though she's done some work. I hope this gets her healing faster. We shall see.