November 26, 2007

GREAT NEWS!!! Sadie has had a great few weeks since surgery. She stopped taking pain medication on Friday and hasn't had any problems at all to speak of. Today was her post-opp appointment and the doctor was AMAZED that she hasn't had any need for pain medication and that she has been feeling so well. They took the cast off and for the first time we got to see evidence that they actually did do surgery on her ankle. The stitches are going away, but she still has lots of swelling and discoloration which the doctor said should go away in the next two to four weeks. They put her in a walking boot and because she is doing so well they told her to slowly work up to normal activity. She can start to put some pressure on her foot until she is comfortable going to a full walk. He would like to see her attempt to not use a brace at all once she is out of the boot (he said coming out of the boot should take the next three - four weeks). When we got home she took two steps and then into the tub she went. She was very brave and took the tape strips off her stitches (which was really, really yucky to watch).
We did get the pathology report... it read like this:

Sections show skeletal muscle, cartilage and synovium. The synovial surface has a papillary appearance, more prominent in part B, and fibrosis, with no acute inflammation. In part B, many portions of synovium are necrotic, and in other areas, shown reactive charges with tall pseudostratified epithelium, calcifications and dystrophic bone, and histiocyte-rich infiltrates. Portions of cartilage in part B have focal cystic changes, irregular endochondral ossification and hypocellular marrow space.
Chronic Synovitis with necrosis
Synovial Chondromatosis

Did that make sense to you??? So basically in normal language; she has several things going on - 1) old DEAD inflammatory tissue (this is good, meaning non active arthritis).
2) some excess connective tissue.
3) excess bone grown with calcification (no understanding as to why this was happening).

Chronic Synovistis with necrosis - means: chronic inflammation with dead tissue.
Synovial chondromatosis - means: too hard to explain, this is the best link I could find although it does say that this does not happen in children (interesting since this is in the report as the diagnosis). www.bonetumor.org/tumors/pages/page71.html
Because there is no way to know why this is happened, there is no way to know how to prevent it. Obviously keeping the arthritis under-control is key!

During this Sadie has gotten out of the bath and is a tad uncomfortable, but mostly because her ankle is moving for the very first time. I will keep you all updated. I appreciate the prayers and support. We feel very much that God has put a blanket of protection over Sadie as this could have been a much longer, more painful process and thus far she has had a miraculous recovery!