Hospital Admission Day

Many of you know that Diego was supposed to have surgery last October. It ended up getting postponed after he came down with a cold. It was then rescheduled for February 19th. Three weeks before the new date, we were notified his hand doctor had to reschedule to March 20th. Needless to say we were less than pleased. So we made a decision to put off hand surgery to stay on schedule. Doing so actually moved his surgery date up to February 16th. That brings us to Friday the 13th, his check-in date..

Friday the 13th: We were up early to make the drive to Dallas. It's a three hour drive and Diego had to be there by 10am. We hoped to leave by 7am but were running thirty minutes behind schedule. Not a big deal considering we had a big day ahead of us.

The hospital visit started with a trip to x-ray for photos of his left hip. Diego was uncooperative and cried for Mama the whole time. All his squirming resulted in the first set being bad. By this time we had already left the clinic and were called back to redo the x-rays. The second time around was no less dramatic but resulted in good photos. Diego also received a lot of toys. The toys are donated to the hospital for the children.

Next stop was the lab to draw blood. This was a finger prick followed by a lot of squeezing and crying. Then it was back to admissions, then lunch and finally assigned a room, #309. A couple hours later we were visited by Diego's surgeon, Dr. Birch. He explained the procedure, an 'open hip reduction with femoral shortening'. Generally it involves the lengthening of Diego's leg muscles and ligaments along with removing a section of the femur. This will allow the head of his hip bone to move into the pelvis. When he gets out of surgery he will be in a Spica cast. It starts at the chest and goes down the left leg to the ankle and right leg to the knee. He will not be able to situp and will be on his back for 8 weeks. He will need a special car seat and a wagon for transport.

It's going to be a tough 8 weeks for our family. For now we have a weekend of freedom and we plan to make the best of it. We will visit friends, go to the Ft. Worth Zoo and play as much as possible. We have until 6am monday morning to have Diego back in his room. Check back for photos of our fun planned weekend :)