Last October, Grace came to me to say that her knee hurt. I pass out tons of bandaids, so I didn’t think much of it. I plopped her on the kitchen counter and finished making my breakfast. I expected to see a scratch but when I pulled up her pant leg and couldn’t believe her giant knee cap. Grace was still walking around so I figured it must be some type of swollen joint. Shelby was waiting for us to pick her up at the airport, so we swung by there on our way to the urgent care. However, thry immediately sent us packing to the ER.
The doctors in the ER originally thought the same thing I did, because even her knee was gigantic she wasn’t really complaining of much pain at all. The ER doctors consulted with the surgeon that usually sees Grace at the Spina Bifida clinic and he told them what they were actually seeing on the X-ray was indeed a broken knee cap that was being masked by Grace’s limited feeling in her upper legs. They told us she would need a full leg cast, I thought they were joking because at the same time I was having to yell at Grace to stop climbing up and down on the gurney. I remember being a kid and wanting a cast, unfortunately my daughter did not share in this crazy notion -she was heart broken. With tears streaming down her face, they put on her purple leg cast. Thankfully, her big sister bedazzled the cast for her and that really cheered her up.
Since Grace broke the knee on her better leg, she really wasn’t good at getting around. We had several appointments that week to get ready for her upcoming surgery and a week of a bowel cleanout anyway - so we decided to keep her home. Grace “just happened” to have an appointment with one of her orthopedic surgeons for her scoliosis two days after the cast was put on. We weren’t even through the door, when the surgeon said we needed to talk. He wanted to X-ray her knee again, so they sawed off the cast. The results were suggesting she had also torn one of her knee tendons. If this was the case, she was also going to need surgery on her knee if the tear was bad enough. This began a flurry to get her scheduled for a MRI and they sent her home in a knee mobilizer.
So amongst the bowel cleanout, trick or treat, pre-surgery testing, we also fit in a late afternoon MRI. I will have to say Grace was really a rock star. She didn’t complain once that she couldn’t eat the day of her MRI. The MRI did show a tear, but thankfully everything was still aligned in her knee cap and nothing was loose floating around. Her surgeon felt her knee would mend well on its own, but she would have to get the leg cast back on. It was decided that the orthopedic team would be paged after her bladder surgery to come and put on the leg cast.
I had been really worried about how Grace was going to do at her upcoming surgery. Having to be at the hospital most of the week before the surgery, really put her at ease for the actual surgery day. She was so brave and even went back to the surgery room with one of the nurses. After several hours, Jeff and I were allowed to go see her in recovery. It was the saddest thing to see her with the tube coming out of her nose and the tubes coming out of her abdomen. Then she had to get that cast on, now my heart was completely broken to have her go through all of this.
