Evans Calcaneal Osteotomy, Cuneiform plantarflexory opening wedge osteotomy,Tightening of the Posterior Tibial Tendon, Achilles tendon-lengthening

Yah...so those are all the things Josh had done on his right foot yesterday.

I apologize right now if I get a little too wordy.  I am using this as my journal though so I don't want to leave out a whole bunch of stuff.  

 To give a little bit of background, we have to go back to me and Andy.  He has extremely flat feet and I have very pronated (rolling in) feet.  With our genetics combined our kids are doomed to have foot problems.  Josh seems to have received the worst of it.  Here are his feet a couple of weeks ago...flat, pronated and turning out.

 

His left one is definitely worse than his right but our good neighbor, who also happens to be a foot doctor, said they should probably both be fixed so Josh can have a better quality of life.  Currently he has a hard time running and they do give him pain occasionally.

Josh had received a very nice blessing the night before from Andy and my Dad.  And the night before that, we had a family home evening lesson on Joseph Smith's leg story and the power and role of the atonement in the pain and healing process in our lives.  We tried to prep him well.

We arrived at the hospital at 6:30 yesterday morning.  All went well checking him in and getting him situated.

The nurses were very nice and explained everything they were doing to Josh.

He got to wear some cute hospital clothes and we got our own little room which was very nice.  I was kind of expecting just having to wait in a regular waiting room.  This was so much better!

Josh loved his little, orange booties!

Handsome guy!

We had all kinds of people come in and talk to us before they wheeled him away.  I could tell he was a bit nervous but trying to be brave.  Bless his heart!

I knew I had about 2 1/2 hours of waiting so I tried to be productive and read a whole bunch of stuff.  I recently began the final book in the Fabelhaven series so it was fun to get deeper into that.  I'm also teaching Relief Society on Sunday and so it was good to have time to go through my lesson.  I also got in a couple of Conference talks.  Aside from why I was there, it was just so nice to have some quiet time to read to my heart's content.

I also went downstairs a couple of times...once to the cafeteria to get something to eat and then once to the gift shop.  I love the hospital gift shop!  There's always fun things in there.

At 10:30 Dr. Cook came in and said that all had gone well.  They did have a little surprise when they cut into the ankle and found a big hole...a cyst.  He said sometimes they do see that in older kids but not usually so young.  He was able to pack it with bone so it should fill in and heal nicely.  He showed me a picture he had taken of Josh's foot on his phone and explained to me again all four things they had done.

Josh came in about 30 minutes later...kind of "dizzy", pale and a little bit slow of speech but not too out of it.

He rested a bit and had some water and a little later some root beer and after a while felt like getting up and trying out the crutches.  We had bought some on Monday and he had been practicing a ton on them so he was confident when they had him try them out in the hospital.

After his short jaunt on the crutches they said we could get him ready to go home but then he lost his root beer all over and so they wanted him to stay longer.  He listened to some of my running tunes to pass the time.

  About 45 minutes later he got up on the crutches again.  All was well so I got him dressed and just as they were bringing the wheel chair to us he threw up again.  Poor guy.  He was so worried that we would have to wait longer and he really wanted to go home.  I changed his clothes and they were still willing to let us go so we were out of there.

That smile doesn't look fake at all does it?

We got him home and Grandma Jannie was there with the other two boys to welcome him.  He passed the rest of the day on the couch, continuing to not keep anything down...even with an anti nausea medicine.

He was pretty frustrated that he couldn't eat.  He was so hungry.  Finally, towards bed time he was able to eat a bit and it stayed down. Yeah!

Grandma and Grandpa Bryan came and ended up spending the night.  They were down in our guest room, Matt was in his room alone, Andy and Josh were in our bed and I slept on the trundle bed in Abby's room with her...and eventually Ben who woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

It was a full day but it seemed to go really well for Josh.  His foot was still numb from the anesthesia so there was no complaining about pain.  We were just waiting to see what the next day would bring.