2nd stage-tenotomy
After about 6 or 7 casts Ian had a tenotomy done. This is where the achilles tendon is cut so that the heel is able to drop down and can be planted flat. Most kids will need this done, but not all. In infants it is a relatively easy procedure and the heel cord grows back quickly. Ian's doctor here did it under general anesthesia, but out in Iowa they do it under local.
It was relatively quick but it's not fun to see your child go under and be carried into an operating room.
They told us Ian would have small areas of blood on the heels of the casts afterwards but it would stop bleeding soon. He had the tenotomy in the morning and by dinner that evening they were still bleeding and those small spots were pretty large. Luckily they stopped soon afterwards.
Now, if there is anything less fun than months of comments and stares about your newborn being in full legged casts, it is getting more comments and stares about the BLOOD on those casts.
But what's a mom to do with all that blood? Well, I sat on the floor with my daughters poster paints and painted the back of those things white, that's what I did! LOL (This COULD soften the cast a little, I guess, so I don't recommend it).
Those casts stayed on for a little over a month before we moved on to stage 3.
That's really how we took everything with Ian's feet. We celebrated the end of each stage and moved on to the next one.
posted by KM at 11:20 AM
2 Comments:
Hi! New here. Searching the internet for information ~ my daughter Maia just had a tenotomy and the same general consequence (the blood on the back of the cast). I was wondering... she is still in a lot of pain? She had this procedure done yesterday morning, and she's still really uncomfortable. Did Ian seem very uncomfortable for a long period of time after his tenotomy? The only other thing i can think is that she might just be unbelievably gassy or be having some other gastric problem. She screams for a long time and THEN starts rooting, and generally when she's hungry or in gastric distress she starts off by rooting. Anyway, i was just wondering about other children's responses to this procedure. Can you help?
7:04 PM
i love your site- and your little boy's so cute! my son Jacob is having his last set of casts removed today and we graduate to the bar- so excited! two things i noticed our doc's done differently- they've sawed off each set of casts, and no anesthetic for our tenotomy! i held him, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd imagined it would be. Bleeding through the casts afterwards was to be expected, they said. after watching to make sure the spots stopped growing, i covered them up with bandaids. painting's a great idea too!
4:14 AM
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