more details please...

I know that I owe more writing to this than I have been giving.

The last two days without the cast has been great. Madeleine is infinitely happier, a better sleeper, cuter and everything else you can imagine! She had a bath last night- the first in a long time. She loved it. She smells so good now! The steri-strips that were holding her incisions together came off and a lot of the blood that was still on her leg washed away. I have to say that her leg looks pretty good. Dr. Mosca did a really good job on the incisions and the stitches. It is still difficult to see your one year old baby scarred up. Her pristine skin marred with purple marks and lines.

She is obviously favoring the left leg now. We've noticed that she doesn't bend her knee. She will move it at the hip but not at the knee. I will call the physical therapist today. I can imagine that her knee is stiff after being in the cast for so long. She also had two large pins inserted into the bone where they did the femoral osteotomy (An osteotomy is a surgical operation whereby a bone is cut to shorten, lengthen, or change its alignment. It is sometimes performed on a hallux valgus, or to straighten a bone that has healed crookedly following a fracture. It is also used to correct a coxa vara, genu valgum, and genu varus).

The end of her leg is interesting. The very definition of a Syme's amputation is inserting the heal pad under the tibia so that it can be weight bearing. The bottom of her leg looks like the bottom of her foot only round. It is soft and pink. Dr. Mosca left the heal attached in the back by her Achilles tendon. I remember when she had her little foot her tendon was apparent and very tight in the back of her heal. It looks the same and it warms my heart to see that my sweet baby is still the same in more ways than a few.