I don't have any good pictures of Trinity in her spica cast but the image above shows what it was like. Hers was more like the one on the right without the bar and the piece down on the left (right for her) leg. Her cast went all the way down the left leg and around the waist.
We were scheduled to have her spica cast removed on March 17th. I was very excited to be rid of that thing. Anyone that has had a child in a spica cast knows exactly why I felt that way...
It's virtually impossible to keep them from getting urine inside the cast!! When that does happen, you have to sit with a hair dryer on the cool setting forEVER! If you do not get it dry, the moisture trapped inside will cause the skin to blister.
So...we left for Baltimore and I could not wait to get our lives back to normal. I remember packing pairs of socks, a pair of shoes and undies (no more diapers!). For over a month it had been one sock, one shoe and diapers and didn't figure I would need them after the spica cast was gone. I was so wrong...
When they pulled her cast away from her leg the skin over her knee began to bleed. Of course, she was looking and saw the blood trickle over the side of her leg onto the white bed sheet. My reaction time to comfort her was slightly delayed. I won't lie, my heart stopped and I thought I might passout when I saw it myself. Dr. Standard assured me over and over that everything was alright. I tried to listen to him, comfort her and control myself as best as I could. I had a hard time concentrating on what they were saying, especially when they were moving her leg around.
He said that sometimes the knee is difficult to get to heal up right. In Trinity's case, when we went for the cast change at two weeks there had been problems with the knee healing badly. He said that when he scraped the knee to get it to heal up right, the fresh blood caused it to stick to the material inside the cast. When they removed the cast it pulled away the scab that should have been on there and left behind the soft pinkish tissue under the surface.
On top of the knee wound, her scars weren't what I had been expecting. On her hip and knee the scar was very thick and raised. He called them Keloid scars. Before that day I had never seen one and like I tend to do, I thought it was something I had done. After doing some research online I learned that people do in fact develop these types of scars due to a certain skin type.
Trinity and her cousin Savannah. Not the greatest picture but you can see her knee scar in the bottom right.
Aside from the scars and the knee problem everything else was great. Because of the knee we had to take the spica cast back home for six more weeks. They did make it removable so that I could tend to the knee and bath her. Before her surgery her range of motion was very restricted. After the surgery it moved like a typical leg, but it seemed very unnatural for her. It took a little getting used to.
Before we left he showed me how to care for the wound. He sent us home with gooey bandages that wouldn't stick to her and plenty of gauze. She had to take antibiotics for 10 days and we had to change the dressing on her knee daily.
I'm sure he did a very thorough job of explaining all of this to me, but Brandon (my husband) ended up having to tell me over and over on the way home. Luckily, Vada, our neighbor at the time was a nurse and she came over to watch me and make sure that I was doing it right. I thank my lucky stars she was there.
When I learned that I was pregnant I was excited. I looked forward to being a Mommy. I knew being a "nurse" came with the Mommy position and I couldn't wait to kiss the boo boo's. I wasn't prepared for kissing this knee boo boo. It was intimidating and I was terrified I would do something wrong.
Since I don't have any good pictures from the time I'm talking about, here's one of my little Trio just because they're so dang cute. Trinity, Savannah & Austin (her cousins)!
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