This poor girl.
She has been through absolute HELL with her foot.
After having a bunionectomy in high school to get rid of bunions, she has had nothing but issues with her feet. We had reconstructive surgery done on her left foot in January 2024. It seemed like it went well until it didn't. So many issues and complications and she has been in pain for a full year.
Her doctor finally ordered a CT scan. Her foot has been broken for a while now. The big toe has literally been separated from the rest of her foot. UGH.
So here we are, a year later, doing surgery AGAIN - on Valentine's Day, nonetheless.
Prior to surgery, her doctor told her he had Plan A through Plan I because her case is that complex.
It's never good when the doctor says the following:
"I now have an infectious disease team involved (thank you Lyme disease), your physician, four other surgeons and a team at the hospital. You made "cool case Monday," and this could go really good or really bad. We might be able to fix it, or we may have to cut you open, see what we're dealing with, take a bone biopsy, then just sew you back up and wait - and then potentially do two more surgeries."
Surgery took almost two and a half hours. When Dr. Roger's came in, he looked tired. He said what he found was "concerning." The screws that were in her feet literally fell out when he gave them the tiniest tug. The bone develops in 4 stages - it's more or less a sticky liquid that then either grows into bone or connective tissue. Her bone had started to grown and then essentially liquified.
He took a bone graft from her heel and a cadaver and added it to the space where her big toe had broken away from her foot - and then she got the grand prize of an external fixator to hold everything together.
Her body no longer tolerates any form of metal (also thank you Lyme disease), so the metal has to be external and temporary. He did biopsy the bone and now we wait anywhere from 5 days to 2 months to see if it will provide answers.
You can see how the external fixator works - there are four stainless steel screws drilled into her bone.
The yellow circle shows the dark space where there was a gap and now there is a bone graft.
She woke up in excruciating pain. Usually anesthesia makes her funny, but they did not bring her out to me for a LONG time after surgery. She had a whole team of people trying to help her stabilize back in PACU. They finally came out and talked to me and we made a team decision to go back and give her a nerve block. When she finally got to me, she was calm, but was still in a ton of pain.
All of the kids have been so great to try to keep her mind off of her foot - they all politely did face masks at my request - which made all of us laugh!
It has been a rough first week.
Carsyn had her first post-op appointment after only four days.
Dr. Rogers is watching her like a hawk this time around. He's a little done with us.
They unwrapped her foot so he could check everything - here is the external fixator in its glory! This sucker has to stay there for 8-10 weeks, and he will need to tighten it frequently.
This is where they took the bone graft and where she currently has the most pain. Dr. Rogers says it's nerve pain. I hope it doesn't last!
You can clearly see the openings in her skin in this picture.
Dr. Rogers checked to make sure everything was tight - and Carsyn filmed it, which I don't know how because not only did it look painful, she was squirming all over. Poor kid!
Here's to hoping this is the last one - and we aren't touching the other foot!
You are a trooper, Cars!
