Surgery

Matthew wore special shoes during the day for a long time and the shoes and bar at night. He learned to walk in them.


Eventually, he was given the ok to stop the shoes and bar, and went into his first AFO. (ankle foot orthotic)

In the spring of 2007, his foot was turning again. He was botoxed and serial casted for 8 weeks. He did everything in those casts from camping to soccor to wall climbing. NOTHING slows this kid down.


His heel cord was better, but still tight. He was growing... a lot.

In Sept, his surgeon decided that he needed some surgical intervention to correct his foot. We agreed.

Before surgery pics You can see how the upper foot has turned inward

Here he is standing on his foot. He was no longer able to be flat on the ground. from the back you can see how his ankle and foot are no longer shaped correctly. The calcaneal osteotomy should fix that.


Compare his foot to this one bcfootandankle.com/osteotomy.htm makes me excited to just think about what his foot will look like after all this is done!

So, on Jan 22/08, my little 5 yr old went in and after 3 1/2 hours of surgery had a posterior medial release (all the muscles in his foot were tight) a tibial tendon transfer (moved the tendon and muscle to try to get some upward motion of the foot) a calcaneal osteotomy (removal of 5 mm of his heal bone) and some more botoxing.

He was in a lot of pain in the hospital. He was on 3 ml's of morphine per hour plus he was getting morphine boluses whenever he needed them. (12 ml's of morphine within 10 min) He came home on Friday Jan 25 on codeine and tylenol.

They split his cast immediately after putting it on to make room for all of the swelling. Trust me, it was needed. Poor kids skin was so tight I thought it would burst.