I’ve been sitting on the porch for an hour staring at the laptop, I hate making these kinds of updates. We just got back from the orthopedic specialist for a checkup with Skylar’s hips/spine and to see if he’s a candidate for getting botox in his left heel cord to put his foot flat. For those of you who don’t know Skylar has left side hemiplegia and hemiparesis which is similar to someone who has had a stroke. Due to this Skylar’s left foot is pronated and inverted, his muscles in his left side are tight and his left hand is showing signs of wrist drop due to neglect.

And so to begin with this shitty update- we did another xray of Skylar’s hips which were perfectly fine and in place last time we checked. Skylar now has spastic hip dysplasia, his left hip is basically dislocating itself due to so much spasticity in his muscles on his left side of his body. He basically told we there’s really nothing we can do about it other than monitor it closely for the next several months (because it’s caused by his spasticity). Once it gets about half way out it’s the point of no return and we’ll have to go ahead and do surgery to correct it. This basically hit me like a ton of bricks because I did not expect this to happen. He also reccommended I see a hand specialist because Skylar’s hand is getting worse and we also might need to correct it with surgery as well.

We also got the OK for botox which will be injected into his left calf to help him put his foot flat so he can get on the ball with walking (he’s up to about 10 steps unassisted now). This is normally an in office procedure but since Skylar has this new found anxiety/panic with doctors we’ll be doing it at the hospital and he will be sedated. Since we’ll be seeing Dr. Baynem for the rest of Skylar’s life we don’t want to traumatize him.  

I also just found out my neighbor lost his battle with liver cancer last night and I’ll be attending his memorial they’ll be doing at his house tonight. Trying to force a smile today but it’s just not working.