Jennie's Surgery

Jennie was born with clubfeet. After spending countless months getting her feet fixed, we thought she was in the clear and never have to deal with that kind of stress again.
Well that wasn't in the cards for us. As Jennie grew, we noticed that her left leg would buckle and she would fall occasionally. After spending this past summer hiking and the falling become more frequent, we decided this was more than just a nuisance. We found a local doctor who was familiar with clubfeet and pediatrics and set up an appointment. After several x-rays and a CT Scan, we were told Jennie needed a few surgeries to fix her knee.

This is an x-ray of her knee caps. To compare, the one on the left (which is actually her right knee) looks normal. Everytime Jennie would bend her knee, the left knee cap would move to the side of her leg. It doesn't cause her pain but it looks painful since normal knee caps aren't supposed to do that.

This is the first of at least three surgeries. Because the movement of a knee is so complex and her deformity is complex, the doctor needs to fix a few issues before fixing the actual knee cap issue.

This being said, Jennie's left leg is "knocked kneed" which means it is at a weird angle instead of straight. This surgery is to fix that part. A metal staple was attached to her inner leg to stunt the growth of that side of the leg. As the leg continues to grow it will straighten or over correct the angle. Once that is done (4-6+ months), the staple will be surgically removed. Then the next phase will be to see what the rotation of her hip is doing and make a plan to fix that. After the rotation is fixed, then the knee cap can be dealt with.

Jennie was very nervous to go into surgery. She was able to be put to sleep with sleeping gas which helped so she didn't have to have an IV until she was asleep. Most kids wake up grumpy, she woke up sad and whiny. The first day was great pain wise because she was given a blocker to numb her entire leg. The next day was not so good...lots of pain, crying, and screaming. Over the next few days, the pain got better and she was back to her mostly happy self. Bending the knee has been a different story. She has had a hard time wanting to bend it since it hurts, but she is getting better. It has been a longer recovery than we thought it would be and we don't look forward to the next surgery.

Jennie's swollen knee after being able to remove the outer bandages. 

Thankfully, we have had great family and ward family support. Grandparents came to help with the other kids. Ward members came to visit Jennie and offered numerous prayers and meals to help lighten our load.