The big picture

For well over a year now, I have known something just wasn't right with my daughter's left ankle/foot. We saw a PT who instructed us with proper streching techniques. We have religiously streched Nadia's foot daily, sometimes several times a day but her ankle just continues to be in state of not quite right. So I set out to find a fix.
Finding a fix wasn't a quick trip to one doctor! The first orthopedic doctor said that with enough streching she should be fine. So we did that for awhile. Her school PT said that she didn't think anything was the matter at all (I knew that wasn't right!), the Rehab Medicine doc said to pursue more private PT if it bothered her. Well, she doesn't have sensation below her waist so how was I to know if it bothered her?! It bothers me when I look at it! So, for about a year, we have just watched it and from time to time, my husband and I would look at one another and kinda scratch our heads and wonder if we could do anything else. Then we began to think it was her stander's fault, perhaps she was not getting enough weight on the foot. We had the stander evaluated and the wheelchair sales rep suggested considering a new stander purchase ($4000!). The second orthopedic doctor suggested that when she couldn't wear her AFO's anymore, and she was bothered by it, he would be willing to perform surgery and do a heel cord release, but she would be immobile for about 6 weeks as the heel cord healed properly. Nobody had the same answer for us, and nothing really sounded desireable. And so we remained stuck with no clear direction.

Yesterday we went for our routine annual AFO (ankle/foot orthosis) brace casting. I just expected them to fabricate new braces for her, never did I expect to walk out of there with a new outlook on life for Nadia's foot. It was as if each of the previous specialists only saw Nadia's foot in light of their specific discipline, but this therapist opened up a whole new world for us. I felt like I was in a large theater, my husband and I the only ones in the audience, and as the curtain was raised, Nadia and the therapist sat on the stage. The therapist began to lecture and revealed the big picture to us. We were amazed! Why did nobody ever see this before? How was it that we have gone to splint clinic for the past 3 years and not once have we met this lady? How was it that numerous therapists and doctors with real MD's were so off in their own world?!
A preacher friend of ours calls this "navel gazing." When one is just so absorbed with himself, he sees only what is within, not anything else around him.

As I rejoiced that we will not only non invasively fix Nadia's ankle, they will also fix her knee which turns out and will not straighten all the way! The answer to this is serial casting. She will wear a cast, one week at a time, which will gradually increase her Range of Motion. Each week, she will have one cast removed and then after some deep stretching, they will fit her with another cast which will stay for another week, and hopefully within several weeks, she will have full Range of Motion to both her ankle and her knee!

As a side note, as they were casting her ankle to use as a mold for her new AFO braces, she rubbed the hot pink plaster cast on her leg and told her Papa, "This cast is so beautiful!" I am thankful that she sees it as beauty because soon it will become part of her for well over a month! Leave it to a child to see the beauty in something we tend to look at as a burden!

On a deeper level, my step father had this comment that I'll use in closing, "Isn't it wonderful that God allows us to see the big picture through His telescope? Although the picture He lets us see through His microscope ain't bad!"