10 things I won’t miss about the great spica cast adventure:
Posts Tagged ‘moleskin’
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April 13, 2008gangrene
April 9, 2008We are a day closer to turtle soup…he’s not looking well today.
I knew his cast was really getting dirty. We haven’t even had any visitors sign it in the past couple of weeks because it’s closer to black instead of blue in most parts at this point.
Someone also told me that when they cut the cast off, it will end up being in half a dozen parts or more, so if anyone ever saved one, they probably glued it back together. We’ve been more fortunate than most because his doesn’t have the smell I was told would be inevitable at this point.
One thing we’ve done along the way, and I don’t know if others do this or not, but when he does have a “mess” that gets the inside of the cast dirty, we’ve cut away the plastic lining and replaced it as we’ve gone through the weeks. That way, if anything gross gets on the lining of the cast, it just gets removed and new moleskin is put in its place.
He also colored over quite a bit of the outside with yellow chalk, so now it’s sort of a blue/black/yellow color overall.
Checking for areas that need to be re-taped generally happens in the evening unless there’s an emergency (bad mess) that requires it to be done earlier in the day. I’m amazed how much moleskin and medical tape we’ve gone through in nearly 8 weeks.
But we figured out pretty quickly some areas were more crucial than others – the upper part of the cast that cuts into his chest always needs fresh moleskin or he ends up with terrible marks that look like rug burn. Also the area where his diaper is fitted, front and back, side to side needs to be comfortable, clean and dry all the time.
Then there are the areas that aren’t so crucial. Like the bottom of the cast on his broken foot where his toes peek out. The other day I posted a picture of where the heel of the cast had a hole worn through it.
What I didn’t notice was the black tape near his toes when I took the picture. Oh sure, I knew it was there but getting tape to stay in place around those toes has been an effort in frustration so I don’t bother too much if the tape doesn’t stay in place.
I sent the email to a few friends and one of them wrote me back –
What is the black thing toward the right? It looks like a toe with gangrene.
No…that’s just tape that comes off 10 seconds after I’ve taped it down!
where was i?
February 27, 2008One thing that’s entertaining about consecutive days on not enough sleep is just how loopy I get. It’s 5pm now and I’ve had Firefox pulled up since first thing this morning with the intent to post. There are all these little short circuits that aren’t making the connection in my brain.
For instance, my brain just told me to tell you all good luck tomorrow at the relay. But guess what? Today is Wednesday, not Friday! Just in case you didn’t know…that means you still have…(let me count this out…Thursday is one, Friday is two…), okay you still have 2 1/2 days to go.
Speaking of doing really dumb things; I accidentally reformatted my computer that I use for personal use at home. While not a total and complete worst thing ever kind of thing to do because I prefer using an external drive to house all the really important stuff, it still meant I lost all my email.
I can’t find the CD (I’m sure I threw it away) for MS Office so right now I’m stuck using Works until my replacement CD comes in. And I had emails I hadn’t answered yet so that’s not really working for me since I lost almost all the email addresses.
A friend of mine that I’m used to seeing 3-4 times a week when I don’t have kiac syndrome (kid in a cast) called last night to see if I wanted to hang out. That sounded like so much fun! I gave it my best effort to get that boy not only in bed but comfortable and asleep.
Instead what happened was what happens every other night. By 8:30, I was feeling rode hard and put down wet so I climbed in bed with him where we held hands until he eventually fell asleep.
I called around to various occupational and physical therapy places and found some more moleskin today (we ended up not having enough). They also suggested any place that sells orthotics might have it also. But they were really nice and sold me a yard of it and said if I need more, just give them a couple of days’ notice and they would be happy to order it for me.
Best news of all, we had a little breakthrough today. He happily went for a walk in his wagon! He’s been associating rides in the wagon with going to the doctor which means his cast comes off which means his foot isn’t broken. So when we’ve tried taking him for walks, he wails instead when he finds out none of that is happening and instead he’s staying in the cast.
But he decided today that a ride around the neighborhood sounded like a good plan. I was home working while they went, but he had a good time from all accounts! Woo hoo!
1st follow-up
February 25, 2008I thought I’d blog about our first follow-up appointment today just in case it’s of any value to someone down the road. First of all, the surgeon was clear to tell us post-op to come in today; even though later the resident and the nurse and everyone else said 2 weeks, we listened to what the surgeon said and I was glad we did.
The short answer is everything is progressing as it should so as far as I’m concerned, that means one week down and 7 to go! My concern was he would either say it wasn’t healing correctly, or that something on the cast needed adjusting in his office. I was so glad neither of those happened.
Our appointment was at 11am and a typical commute time there midday is 45 minutes. So anyone who knows me realizes that meant we started loading him up at 9:15 (which turned out to be a good decision). First thing we did was to think of what all we needed to take with us -
- his seatbelt harness,
- pillows for the back seat,
- his wagon and all the stuff in there (pillow for his back,
- pillow for his casted leg,
- blankets underneath him for padding and one for over the top of him),
- a coloring book and crayons,
- cell phone,
- insurance
- something for him to drink (he’s almost completely lost his appetite because the cast presses down on his stomach and makes him feel full)
- diapers and wipes, in fact we changed him right before for good measure
- the husband aka the chauffeur
- and the boy!
That took 15 minutes to get almost all of that together. Next on the list was getting him into the car. BTW, we did this all wrong – this was our second time. We got the pillows in the back to cushion him, but the casted leg needs to be the one against the back of the seat (he lays lengthwise across the back seat). I put the wrong leg against the back seat.
That was a problem because he has anxiety issues with being lifted for any reason, any time, by any person. Let the shrieking begin. We have a pretty sizeable garage and my car has plenty of width on either side to get him in or out
and my husband’s does on the left side…but not the right side. And of course that meant he needed to get in via the right side.
I got him back out of the car and held him while my husband backed the car out. Then I put him in the wrong way with the car in the driveway. Oops. Third time’s charm – we got him in there and he was hysterical by then. We got the wagon in and the bag full of stuff and finally we were on our way.
Next up was the joy of finding a parking spot in the medical center. I’ll skip the drama that happened but the long story short that finally at 10:40 I suggested dropping me off at the place clearly marked “do not park” so we could park and drop me off. We got the wagon out of the back, got him in and the boy and I headed up to the 8th floor while the husband parked the car.
We checked in and headed into orthopedics (very fast, 2 thumbs up for their speediness) and it wasn’t long before they called us in for more x-rays. I figured we probably would have x-rays taken every time but I wasn’t sure. That’s good to know to expect that in the future.
But while we were sitting in the waiting room, no surprise that 2 other parents were in there because their kids were in spica casts. And thank heavens one of the moms heard me talking to one of the dads about not being able to find moleskin (it protects the skin against chafing, an issue right now).
We have called a gazillion medical supply stores around town, asked several of them to order some for us, etc. to no avail. Apparently if you call anyone who does physical or occupational therapy though, they generally will carry it also. Good to know.
They took 3 more x-rays (ouch…oh it’s painful just thinking how much he did not appreciate that) and we no sooner got into a room when the doctor came in right behind us. The upside was he was really fast but that did mean we didn’t get a chance to calm the boy down before he got there so it was hard to hear what the doctor was saying.
We all saw the x-rays again on the screen and he said everything is healing as it should. We talked about the problem with nightmares all night long, every night as well as just anxiety every time we have to pick him up to change his diaper, etc. He said our pediatrician would be the best resource to see if he needs some sort of mild medication to calm him, or a pediatric psychiatrist (he keeps reliving it in his dreams), etc.
I wish I hadn’t waited a week to ask what to do about the ongoing nightmares since I could’ve taken him to the pediatrician last week. He did say it was possible or even likely that the perceived pain was as much out of his expectation that it hurt, as much as the real pain since by now he should be off codeine and on to tylenol (we have been continuing the codeine as needed).
The cool part after that though was they are all set up with a room of never-ending moleskin! Yay!!! And there’s a guy there who it seemed to me that was his whole job – putting moleskin on casts. I’m probably wrong, but at any rate I was as happy to see him as I was the surgeon (since they both did good things for my boy). He also sent us home with some extra.
Now the funny part to me (guys may not want to read this) was he suggested an alternative to using a regular diaper on the inside (we tuck it inside between his skin and the cast) with an adult diaper on the outside – some parents have better luck with putting a sanitary pad inside the diaper (yes…that kind of sanitary pad…!) followed by the diaper and skipping the adult one on the outside.
The boy was just hysterical from beginning to end of the entire trip inside TCH so by the time we were gone I asked my husband to take him down to 3rd floor where all the good stuff is – food court, gift shop, etc. – while I wrapped up things with his next doctor’s visit.
He said to bring him back in 3 weeks so that’s next up. I called the pediatrician’s office about the anxiety issue as well but haven’t made an appointment with him yet.
I could write a whole other post on finding parking in the medical center but that would be as exhausting as finding the spot in the first place. The upside to a midday appointment is less traffic. But that means you’re probably not going to find a parking spot very easily. We walked clear on the other side of MD Anderson to get back to the car. Past TCH, St. Luke’s,etc. …almost to Ben Taub. I seriously asked if he had parked at the zoo and by that time, I wasn’t kidding. 
It went well though (well, good to me because he didn’t extend the 8-week time frame and didn’t have to cut the cast for any adjustments).
moleskin
February 24, 2008I’ll probably switch over to blogging about living with a spica cast for a while. It probably won’t be very interesting to my running friends, but what I’ve found from searching online is it’s hard to find too many people blogging about it.
Actually, I did trade emails with a couple of people; one is a friend of a friend here in the area. She sent me an email with the following:
The surgeon who applied the cast should have given you some moleskin. It helped tremendously. They gave me a sheet of it to apply on the cast edges. I am sure if you call their office they could get you some.
- it won’t be long until he starts moving. I was amazed at my son’s activity and how he just worked around things. We used a wagon to pull him around in at first, but he was crawling and walking and by the end of the six weeks walking without help, and even running! Just try to keep your sense of humor!
- one of the hardest parts for us was the constipation he got from the pain meds they had him on. Make sure you are giving him some kind of laxative if he is still on other medication. That is not a fun problem to have with a kid in a body cast.
- the itching seemed to come and go, but we used a blow dryer on cool that always seemed to help.
- if he has a couple of friends that you could set up ‘play dates’ with at your house. Visitors and walks really seemed to lift his spirit.
- we bought a cheap little bookcase to put next to his bed so that he could reach all of his toys. We also borrowed a toddler bed and bought a foam mattress pad and sleeping wedge from Bed Bath and Beyond that helped his comfort level enormously. I know spica casts are different, but our son was casted in a reclining position around the waist and only down his one leg. I had a six month old at the time, so we moved the toddler bed into our room for the first few weeks until he could get around more. The cast was so heavy and he wanted to be where we were.
- for sponge baths we bought a nap mat- Walmart- that was plastic. It made him comfortable enough that he could lay on the the counter while we got water. He hated baths at first, but enjoyed it at the end.
- I found some helpful tips online too.
I can’t think of anything else, but if you have specific questions please don’t hesitate to ask. Hang in there! Looking back it was actually a blessing that made me slow down and realize how amazing my kids really are! It does get better!
I also emailed a really nice guy from Jonesboro, Arkansas (not too far from home of the “throwed rolls” – one of my favorite places to eat when we drive back from Indiana) whose son just got out of his a few weeks ago. He had some really good advice too:
I’m glad that someone might benefit from my blogging about our son! The spica cast will definitely go down as one of the most memorable parental moments in our lives. When I wrote on my blog, I had hoped I would be blessed to help another family one day. When the spica was explained to us in the hospital, we were scared to death! I’m sure you guys were, too.
I hate to hear about your son’s nightmares. That is something that we did not have to deal with, however… the pain and cramping for the first couple of weeks kept him crying at night.
Let me begin by saying that these weeks will go by faster than you think. I’m sure you are already getting a little more comfortable and it will get easier with each day. Your son, you, and your family are in my prayers until he gets to walking again! I’m not just saying that either… My family will genuinely pause and pray for you guys. God really helped us through with our son and he’ll help you guys to too!!!
To your questions, there is no cheap answer to the car seat problem! As you found out, those seat are pricey! We went without a car seat. We just used the seat belt harness and a pillow under his legs… seat reclined all the way back in the minivan.
Hair washing… We have a garden tub in our bathroom with a little “ledge-like” thing around it. We would put a plastic covered pillow (that we got from Hospital) on the ledge. Then we would lay him on his stomach and he hung his head in. He was a little nervous about it at first, but then he started having fun with it… playing superman! We also tucked a towel around him and his cast.
Your son’s fracture sounds just like our son’s. It was almost the length of the bone! We have been out of the cast for a few weeks now and he is doing great. He had a little limp for awhile, but that is about gone, too. As you know, the wagon was our friend for several weeks. Since it was winter here, we had him covered up with a blanket in the wagon.
He’ll be back on his feet in no time! In fact, our son started walking one day BEFORE the cast came off. Within weeks, he was crawling on his stomach… then one day… he walked. He also had a blast doing the “Spica Spin” too… We documented some of it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YBhHTliX6o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxUvUgAAbh4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KE7EKXm0y4
Oh! I almost forgot why I titled this post “Hannah”. A close friend of mine who has just been a lifesaver this past week (well, she seems to always be in the right place at the right time), suggested we could take our girls to go see the Hannah Montana movie.
That’s right – I got out of the house! Other than 5 minutes here and there to pick the daughter up from school a couple of times, it was the longest I had been away since the accident. Don’t ask me if the movie was any good because my mind was back home. But the end result was getting out of the house for a little while was just what I needed.
It seemed to help him too; he had fallen asleep while we were gone. And just as important, I think the girls both loved the movie as well as each other’s company. Trying to keep the 4th grader’s schedule as close to normal as possible is high on my list.
She and her dad went to church this morning while we stayed home to blow bubbles.
