Dominic's journey

 Good evening!  As I sit in the hospital room up on the 2nd floor with a full view of the helicopter pad and ER entrance to the hospital, I'm so grateful for my healthy son! I'm thankful to God for guiding the Drs hands and for a successful surgery.  Dominic did great this morning when we brought him in at 6:15. They had him ready for the OR by 7:30 and he was very drowsy from the 'laughing medicine' that he was given. We were unable to go with him to the OR but he was out of it enough that he didn't mind being whisked away by the nurse.  When he was brought back after surgery around 10am he was a little upset and irritated from the anesthesia, so it took him a little to get him quieted. Also his cast was a little tight in a few places and they needed to bring the cast saw in here and cut a little of it off much to his dislike. :( So with that and all the tubes he was hooked up to from the epidural, catheter, and IVs in his arm he was pretty disturbed. Finally aroun...

  Hello to all!  It's been a while since we've updated on here but with his upcoming surgery, we decided to do a few more updates again.  It is with a lot of mixed emotions that we are anticipating his amputation surgery on Thursday, Oct 19. We are so grateful that the knee is fully functional and that it will not need to be removed! The plan is to remove the foot but keeping the heel pad on the bottom of the stump. Some benefits of doing the Boyd amputation is that his stump will be weight bearing and the way its done also helps the suspension with his future prosthetic. Here are few photos of how that is done.  Dominic will be in a spica cast for 6 weeks and at that point the cast and 2 pins will be removed. He will than be fitted for his new leg and that takes a few weeks until its ready. We are hoping that by the beginning of the year he will be walking!  It is difficult to put Dominic thru all this again, and even more difficult to 'let go' of his precious ...

 Good evening to all! We've been fairly silent the last few days but I will try my best to give a accurate picture of what's been happening. It's been one of the most stretching times of my life, but God has given me so many blessings in the midst of it all!  Dominic's cast was put on last week on Friday, 5 days ago. He adapted well in the beginning but after a day or so he started having some real muscle spasms especially at night. He would wake up screaming and throwing his leg around and clearly in pain. We normally gave him oxycodone and that would usually help with the spasms and he'd be able to sleep good after that. It will tear up a mama heart to watch your child go thru that.  Monday took us to Shriners to pick up his KAFO (knee-ankle-foot orthotic) for his left leg. We have about 3.5 hours to Shriners in Greeneville, SC and on the way down there he dozed off and woke up minutes later in spams again. We gave him oxy a few times that day but it never seemed ...

This morning found us at the hospital bright and early at 6 am. Registration and pre-op exams went smoothly and by 8 am Dominic was being wheeled back for the surgery to remove the fixator and Dr Standard also wanted to check on his big toe on the right foot to possibly straighten it during surgery. He ended up not doing anything to it because he was afraid it would hinder the movement that Dominic has with his toe and will need for walking.  Justin went back to the OR with Dominic and I was told he fought the mask a bit when they were trying to put him to sleep. It didn't take real long and he was out!  About an hour and 20 minutes later we were called back to the PACU unit and Dominic was out of surgery but hadn't woken up yet. We waited another 45 minutes until he woke up. This time they tried to make so he wakes up slowly since it had not gone so well the last time. When he had the surgery to put on his fixator he woke up crying and could hardly be consoled. It had taken u...

 Hello to all!  It's been a while since we updated on here. Weeks flew by as we learned to deal with Dominic's fixator and how to properly care for him. It was not without it's trials but mostly we could continue on normally with life. He had two rounds of pin site infections and he took alot of care over that time. The last few weeks he's been really confident with his leg and it took alot for it to hurt him. He took tumbles off the bed and couch recently and just wanted to do it again! We all learned to fear his fixator, especially his sisters, when Dominic got in his crazy moods of throwing that thing around and crawling all over us.  On February 24 we took xrays on Dominics leg and were so excited to hear these words from Dr Standard- "It is time for removal." They scheduled us for March 10 and that seemed far away at the time but here we are!  This evening we had the privilege to meet up with sweet little Phillip and his family. Phillip had the same surge...

This morning took us to Shriners in Greeneville, SC. We have about a 3.5 hour drive so compared to driving to Baltimore it’s a breeze! Our main reason for going was to see if we could get an accommodative prosthetic for Dominic’s left leg. We met with Dr. Westberry and he got us set up for that. As of now plans are to get him up and walking with a prosthetic where the knee can be in a locked or unlocked position. It will basically be a prosthetic leg that his left foot and leg will slip into. That will help to determine whether his knee is stable enough to do a below the knee amputation or if it needs to be done above the knee.   After we met with the doctor we headed over to the prosthetics department. They made a mold for Dominic’s left leg while we were there but it’ll be 6 weeks before his prosthesis is ready. We are hoping that in about 6 months we can do the amputation and then go with a regular prosthetic after that. We feel good about this plan and are so excited about se...