The consultant has said that J's spine is so much straighter that the current cast (his third, applied on 26 September) will be his last. Let me repeat that in case you missed it. HIS LAST CAST!!!!!!!
He can wear a brace in future.
The differences are:
1. a cast is applied under general anaesthetic and is made of plaster of paris
2. a cast cannot be removed day-to-day - just at the end of that cast's life (usually every 12 to 15 weeks)
3. a brace is just molded on with J still awake and is made of plastic with velcro strips to hold it on
4. a brace can be removed, so we will be able to have baths, go swimming, go in sand... all the things a 2.5year old wants to do :-)
I'm so happy!
We had been told probably 2 years in cast and then go to brace. He will have had less than a year in cast! His spine has responded really well.
It's funny how my attitude has completely changed. Someone asked me at another child's birthday party what J was wearing and in front of J I explained about his spine, his scoliosis and how brilliant the cast was. I said how pleased the doctors were and I'm sure J must pick up the complete pride and happiness I feel when I'm saying how much good it is doing.
He stood in front of the mirror the other day in just cast and nappy and said he was wearing a cast. Yes I said - a blue one this time. He pointed to the gap between his shoulder and the top of the cast and said that there was a lot of room this time. Such a sophisticated comment - it amazed me. Yes there is, I replied. He accepts it so easily and just gets on with life :-)
So sometime in the early New Year, he will go into a brace. Yippee!!
I haven't blogged in a while, so you don't know about the little incidents we've had. A couple spring immediately to mind:
About 2 hours after the last casting in September, J was watching television. He'd just eaten a weetabix and we were pretty much ready to go home. Then he vomited the entire weetabix back into his cast (I'd stupidly let him be in a more recumbent position in the bed than is wise after eating). A new cast full of vomit. He STANK!!!!! I felt incredibly guilty (shouldn't let him lie down, should have turned him quicker to his side) but that doesn't change a thing. You can't get stuff out that's down the back between his skin and the cast. Fortunately the smell subsided the next day and now you can't tell. Just as well when you think he's in the cast for weeks and weeks.
Each time we go for casting they put J in a different ward to recover afterwards. For his second cast, he was put in the children's cancer ward. It is unbelievably sobering and has left a big impression on me to be surrounded by very small babies and children who have all sorts of tumours and conditions and are facing regular doses of chemo etc. I'd like to write more, but find expressing it hard. Someone said to me that I must have felt glad that my child's condition is relatively "easy" (not her exact word - but basically "not life threatening"). No. How could I feel glad facing all the pain that was on that ward, sitting with other parents for hours and hours???? It was more the incredible vulnerability of all of us, the fact that "it could be any of us". Our health feels so random. That's only a little bit of what I could write. But I will leave it there and actually post (I've got umpteen unfinished posts from the last few months!).
