Braden has had all kinds of attention this week..."special" attention, that is! (Wink, wink). He started the week off with a 3-hour appointment with a pulmonologist at Sacred Heart, that followed up on the asthma diagnosis, and did a battery of allergy tests. He has only one confirmed allergy...dogs. But the symptoms that he exhibits now are the same as before we got a dog, so the doctor isn't particularly concerned about this finding. But there was some interest in his history of croup and pneumonia as a younger child. It seems that it may be linked to his perchance of asthma. Our doctor believes that people who had chronic croup as children have a higher likelihood of developing asthma as adults. Dr McCarthy thinks that Braden seems to have fallen into this category despite the fact that he isn't an adult yet.
We have another appointment at the Heart Institute in three weeks for additional testing. Should be lots of fun...considering that they're going to induce an asthma attack to see how he responds to various medications. When your airways get blocked, it's best to do that under medical supervision, I always say!
Today we followed up with our surgeon at Shriners'. Here's a picture of his femoral ball during his surgery on September 20th. The head has been tilted and separated from the femur and is held in place by the bracket and pins. The hardware consists of three longer screws going into the head, with another three supporting the femur below, so new bone can remodel and fill the void that was created between the bones.
Things looked really good today. You can barely tell that the bone was two separate pieces just six weeks ago. The body has already created new bone and his pain threshold is getting closer to baseline.
So, after six weeks of being in a wheelchair, he has been graduated to crutches. His left hip and muscles are weak from the non-load bearing inactivity. Now it's time to get him moving. He has two weeks of hopping along before he needs to get rid of those aids. He's a little nervous about all the movement around him at school...but he's got to get back into his regular motion and activity for the body to start loosening up and strengthen. His scripts and recommendations are for pool therapy and a stationary bike. Sounds like Nathan just got a buddy in the deep-end again!
Tomorrow he meets with another specialist--audiology, this time. He's still having his hearing aid tweaked. It would work a lot better if he would just wear it! Glasses are coming too. By the time we're done with him...he'll look like a new kid--literally!
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