Today, we returned for our follow up visit with Dr. Wilson. When we arrived they took Brian straight back to x-ray. There they took an x-ray of his left leg, one of him standing, and one of his left hand. Dr. Wilson then came in to meet with us. He was optimistic but said from what he could see it appeared that the growth plate may have stopped growing. He told us before making any decision about what to do next we needed to have a CT Scan to get a better view of the plate. His staff was great. They walked us over and we had the scan done in a matter of minutes. After the scan was complete we returned to the waiting room.
We started getting nervous because it took a long time before we heard anything. Finally, a nurse came in and said Dr. Wilson had seen the scan but had requested another specialist look at it. We were waiting on those results. At this point, we felt the news was not good.
About an hour later, Dr. Wilson came in. He pulled up the scan and delivered us the bad news. The growth plate was over 60% arrested. He then explained that from the x-ray of the hand that Brian’s current growth was at that of an average 13 1/2 year old. He said that meant that Brian had at least two and half more years of growth left. He then explained that Brian had grown from 5’ 8” to 5’ 9 1/2” in the past six months and that his right leg was already a centimeter longer than the left. He recommended surgery to stop the growth plates at the bottom of both femurs. We agreed and asked how quickly he could do it. He told he would send in the nurse to make arrangements. We thanked him for spending the time to answer all our questions and to assure us that Brian would be okay. We left for the day thinking that it would be at least two weeks or more before the surgery.
UPDATE: We receive a call a day later letting us know they had worked us in. Brian would have surgery on May 24th. Glorious news that they could work him in so quickly.
