Late Updates

We celebrated July 4th a day late because Brady worked that weekend. The fireworks were awesome, thanks to Uncle Pug (Brady's brother-in-law). Austin missed it, though.

What else has Joseph been doing these days? He changed his mind about watching Toy Story 3 so we just took him to McDonald's for the first time. He loved it. We've always been just going through the drive-through to get him the happy meal. This time, though, he went inside and tasted his cheeseburger happy meal with french fries and chocolate milk, as well as our frappe' mocha and caramel. We had the place almost to ourselves due to the time of the day and because it was raining hard. Perfect timing.

I forgot to write an update about our visit to the orthopedic guy on June 25th. We got to the hospital around 9AM. First, we had the cast taken off.

Then, we went to Radiology to have Joseph's hips x-rayed. They initially asked for just one parent to go in with the child. Are you kidding me? Like that would happen. It was a good thing we both insisted to go in, because after the hip x-rays, they wanted to check him for scoliosis while sitting upright. I would have loved to take pictures of him sitting upright, but it took all of Brady and me to hold Joseph up and keep his head from flopping down or him sliding off the seat. I'm pretty sure we were a sight. Then we went back to the lobby to wait, and wait...

Then we went in to a room to wait some more. After all the waiting, the ortho guy came. He said: The right femur has healed. He's not recommending any surgery for the hips, but he did not elaborate. Instead, he changed his focus to possibly doing corrective surgery to Joseph's ankles because of his contractures, for which I said I would rather try serial casting first. We'll go back in 5 weeks to talk more about the ankles. Then, he said Joseph has about 18 degrees of scoliosis and he's not recommending any surgery for scoliosis right now. Then, he's gone after spending less than 5 minutes in the room with us, after we waited three hours. I thought the visit was very personal. Not. It felt like it was a hit and run. I was expecting more substantial explanation of surgical options for Jojo's hips. But he changed his tone from him telling us about 3 possible options plus just symptomatic treatment during our initial visit, to him telling us no surgery and "I'm not a pain doctor," when I asked him what other pain treatment to give Joseph other than Ibuprofen. He just lost my respect and trust. It served him right when Joseph asked, "Why you took so long," when he first set his foot in the room. Or maybe that's why the visit was more abrupt than the first time. Anyway, come next visit, we will come more prepared and won't let him run away that easily. It's very frustrating when your state does not have a big pool of pediatric orthopedic doctors to choose from. That's all I have to say.