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The doctor told us that the surgery went great.  He said the injured leg had taken longer because he he remembered the injured blood vessel.  He selected to not restrict the blood flow to the leg like he did on the right.  He then gave us some pictures showing what he had done.

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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.

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We had volleyball and basketball set up outside as well as the Wii in the garage and the Kinect on the X-Box.  Teenagers migrated between all four places.

The most surprising thing for us was the lack of food they ate.  We had purchased all kinds of food such as 80 hotdogs, 2 boxes of nacho chips, 2 gallons of nacho cheese, 4 bags of popcorn, brownies, rice crispy treats, and more.  With six adults and 34 teenagers, we had expected a lot of eating.  When the party was over, we still had over 50 hotdogs and most of everything else. We now have no idea how much food we should buy for future parties. We have always been told that teenagers eat a lot; I guess it just depends on the kids, their surroundings, and what’s going on.

We have told Brian that next year he will need to have his Birthday Party a little latter into May if he wants another swimming party.

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When Brian got back to the room Dr. Wilson once again joined us.  He looked at the new x-rays and explained that at this time he could not see growth.  He sat and explained what might have to happen.  He explained all the growth plates in the body. He explained what would need to be done if the growth plate had stopped growing.  He told us that based on his age that he might loose an inch in height at that growth plate, but that all his other plates would grow.  S&W never made this clear to us, leaving us thinking Brian would only grow another inch.

Dr. Wilson stated we would need to come back in May to see what the plate was doing.  We thanked him and his staff greatly and scheduled our next appointment in May.

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We went to see the orthopedic surgeon.  When we arrived they sent us to take an x-ray.  We then waited an hour past our appointment time before we were finally taken back to see the orthopedic surgeon.  The orthopedic doctor, if you can call him that, we saw was a student and not the orthopedic surgeon we had seen on other visits.  We asked about the growth plate and how Brian was progressing.  The doctor in training said it looked like it was not growing.  We asked if there was anything we could do?  He laughed and said, “Yea, I guess you can go home and rub oil on it.”  Needless to say this that was our last visit to S&W.  We went to see our primary care physician to be referred to a new doctor.

Our doctor referred us to Philip Wilson, M. D. at Children’s Medical Center – Plano. We scheduled an appointment in March.

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On November 4th, 2010, our son’s life would be forever changed.  We were at the Cameron Yoe Football field, where Brian was playing his last 7th grade football game for the year.  Short into the second quarter,  he was in on a punt that went dreadfully wrong for him.  He broke his left leg. The video is of the dreadful play.

He was rushed to Scott & White Emergency in Temple, TX.   Here are two of the x-rays of his left leg.

The bottom of the femur broke along the growth plate.  We were told that it was a Type II Salter-Harris break.  To make matters worse, the bone went behind the knee pinching the main blood vessel that runs behind the knee.  They had to do a CT Scan of the knee and bring in a Vascular Specialist to look at the blood flow as they tried to reset the knee.  It took them over four hours to temporarily set the knee and to verify blood flow.

At 7AM on Nov 5th, Brian went into to surgery to have two pins put into the bone to hold it in place.  Here is what his leg looked like a week later.

After the one week follow up, we thought our only concern was the growth plate.  We were told that there was a good chance it would no longer grow.  If this happened an orthopedic surgeon would have to kill the growth plate at the bottom of both femurs to avoid one leg growing longer than the other.  This is were the orthopedic surgeon at Scott & White did a very bad job of explaining this to us.  He told us that Brian only had an inch to grow.  At the time he was 5’8”.   This was devastating news to us. We have been told by numerous doctors over the years that Brian should be some where around 6’5” when he stopped growing.  More on this story in the March 16th post.

On Thanksgiving Eve, Brian started felling bad and by Thanksgiving Day he was even worse and running a high fever.  We decided to take him to the emergency room.  We discussed taking him to Providence in Waco, but since S&W had all his records and we would be seeing the orthopedic surgeon there until Brian was well we returned to S&W ER.  In light of what we know now we should have taken him to Waco, but that is another story.

In the emergency room, the doctor took one of the longest needles I have ever seen and stuck it deep into Brian’s knee to pull off fluid to see if the knee was infected and if it was what kind of infection.  It turned out he had a staph infection from one of the pins.  He was rushed into surgery early on Black Friday.  The head of orthopedics came in and did the surgery.  He removed the infected pin and cut a three inch incision down the knee cap so he could flush out the infection.  Brain then spent the next six days in the hospital on a heavy antibiotic drip. He then spent the next six weeks on heavy antibiotic pills.  He also went to the hospital each week to have his blood tested to make sure the infection was going away.  Out of all the doctors we dealt with at S&W, James. H. Brien, DO was the best.  Dr. Brien really cared about Brian.  He even gave us his personal cell phone and said to call night or day if we had questions.  We can’t say thank you enough to Dr. Brien and to God that the infection was cured.

The story continues on Jan 3rd.

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You can download all pics in their original format in this zip file.

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Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

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