5 stitches and 16 kilos of love

Well, another initiative rite of passage, Zoé fell on her way to school this morning, and cracked her head on a concrete ledge. We rushed to the Emergency Room, and had her eyebrow stitched 5 times. My little trooper didn't like the shot to numb the gash area, nor the sheet in which she was wrapped. I was a nervous wreck, as you can imagine. Zoé tends to fall a lot, as part of her MMD. She loses balance, her clunky shoes and braces don't seem to help, but usually Zoé has a really good protection mechanism, she never hurts herself.
This morning was a different story.
We were blessed to have the company of our school aid in the ER, to help play with Zoé and enable me to double park and get a cupcake after the procedure was done.
Zoé is a hell of a champion when it comes to hospitals, doctors and procedures. She cried quite a bit because she was mostly scared and they wrapped her up like a little burrito, and covered her eyes so she wouldn't see the needle and thread coming in and out...
I hope it heals quick and scarless.
Tomorrow, we go up to Shriners and see our neuromuscular doctor for her bi-annual neuro clinic. Another doctor, but Zoé is definitely used to it.
Then, we will continue North up to Lake Tahoe where we will stay in a resort by the lake, on the other side of the Californian border, in Nevada.
We'll let you know how that goes.
We just got back from our 3-day weekend to Lake Tahoe where we enjoyed the pristine beauty of the lake surrounded by beautiful snow covered mountains.
We saw Dr. Macdonald at Shriners. He was very positive and filled me with much pride when he said we'd been doing so much with Zoé.
He did look at her walk with her AFOs, without them, with her Nikes, without them, with her SMOs, without them. He concluded that for Zoé, the best would probably be not to use the AFos, as they tend to add two sizes to her shoes and therefore making them too bulky for her to walk, hence the 5 stitches the day before.
He also mentioned that Zoé's leg inversion was due to her hip. The tip of the femur that is locked into the hip rotates inwardly all the way down to the knee. Her foot will always be inverted, that's part of her cavus deformity, and there is nothing to do about the hip. He said that in most kids, as they grow up, the body shifts and realigns itself, so again we'll have to be patient and wait for Zoé's body to mature and readjust.
We did cast Zoé's feet though for her night braces. Dr. M thinks that Zoé can definitely benefit from being held at 90 degree at night for her feet to get a good stretch.
We also bumped into the surgeon who operated on Zoé last summer, he was also impressed with Zoé. He doesn't think she needs surgery quite yet, but most probably in a couple years she might need either another plantar facia release or a tendon transfer. Again, Patience is our creed.