Zoë's First Cast

[Guest guest]

Good Evening All --

So, I haven't actually posted to this group at large though I have

touched base with a couple of the families coming through Rochester

for casting as I am local to the city.

It's been a pretty steep learning curve as my daughter, Zoë, was

diagnosed with progressive infantile scoliosis with a 44 degree curve

on September 1st (totally caught us by surprise as we just went to

have extra eyes to check out the curve in her spine that we thought

was due to her issues with rickets). But this group has been a true

blessing for us -- the doctors and nurses we work with (both her

general pediatrician and the orthopedists) have been continually

surprised by the amount of knowledge my husband and I have been armed

with as we walked through this process.

So, Zoë (who is currently 15 months old) got put in her first cast at

Strong in Rochester today. It was surprisingly less stressful than I

anticipated because I really knew what to expect. We picked the purple

one (though as Jenn & her husband warned us you can barely see the

color. ). We're pleased with the current results as in the cast,

they got her curve down to 22 degrees and her doctor said it looked

really good there.

She was very sleepy and mellow for the rest of the day as was to be

expected from the anesthesia. She has weekly P/T scheduled on

Wednesdays because of her physical delays due to low muscular strength

from the rickets, so I'm looking forward to the specialist helping her

to figure out how to quickly adapt to this new situation. But, all in

all, she seems to be tolerating it amazingly. And Daddy and I are

getting used to it too.

Thanks again for all the great information and I would love to meet up

with other families as they pass through Rochester. I'm really

thankful that it wasn't everything I had built up in my mind as I'm

also 37 weeks pregnant and really didn't need the extra stress.

:-)

Valery

Zoë (15 months old) -- starting at 44 degrees, in-cast corrected to 22

degrees; first cast from Strong in Rochester