Eight-Plate Surgery

At our visit last October, Dr. Standard recommended that Lauren have an "eight-plate" surgically placed near her right knee during the next year in order to correct the knock-knee or valgus position of her leg. Nana and I took her to Baltimore for this surgery on June 26th. We quickly learned that almost two year old Lauren and three and a half year old Lauren handle this situation quite differently. In pre-op, Lauren refused to do almost everything that the nurses asked her to do, from putting on a hospital gown and booties to drinking the sedative medicine.

We were thankful that the actual surgery went quickly and the eight-plate was successfully attached to the distal end of Lauren's right femur. Dr. Standard came out to the waiting room afterwards and told us that if Lauren felt okay in the recovery phase, we could take her back to the hotel. He asked that we come back in two to three months for a check-up on the eight-plate progress.

Recovery started out a bit rough. As the post-op nurse put it, Lauren woke up with a bang! She came to and immediately ripped off her ID band, blood pressure cuff, and bandage on her leg. She then proceeded to yank the IV from her foot! Three of us tried to stop her from doing all of this and failed miserably. After her initial reaction to everything finally wore off, her spirits seemed to improve.  A physician's assistant went over discharge instructions and soon afterward we were released to go back to the hotel.

The epidural injection given to Lauren during the surgery was expected to give her pain relief for about 10 hours, but Lauren's knee was already pretty painful by the time we were transferring her in and out of the van to get to the hotel. We got her heavy duty prescription filled right away and gave her that and some ibuprofen. Fortunately, she was able to nap a couple hours that afternoon.  That evening, we had to mix her medicine in with some pudding since she refused to drink it, which she ended up throwing up a little while later. She woke up several times in the night, whimpering or complaining of her "owie" knee.

The next morning, though not wanting to bear weight on her right leg yet, Lauren's pain seemed to have improved considerably.  We loaded up the van around noon and headed off to our half-way point in Pennsylvania where we'd stay the night on our way back to Michigan.