Brandy's ankle update

Here are Alexa and Daddy coloring last night.

And here she is in her raincoat after she came home from school today.

I know this blog is supposed to be for Alexa, but unfortunately this does affect her - I had an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon in Eugene today. He had another x-ray taken and I told him that a part of my foot/ankle was hurting a bit. He took a harder look at the x-rays and said that there is little to no new bone growth still, and the screws may be starting to wobble. This leaves two options, wear an AFO (ankle-foot-orthotic) and wait and hope that eventually it fuses, or go in and do the bone graft again this time using a growth hormone to promote new bone growth. This would require removing the screws and putting in a rod or a plate or something like that. I have to go have another CT scan done (Saturday) to determine that the x-rays are giving us an accurate picture. Apparently there is a small chance that there is more bone growth than is showing in the x-rays. I think this will also tell us if the screws are in fact wobbling. I go in for another visit January 8 to discuss these options at which time we should have the CT scan results. For those of you who didn't know my father, he wore those evil AFO's and they hurt all the time, and I would almost rather cut off my leg than wear one. I am slowly overcoming the panic that I feel when contemplating going through this surgery again, and especially figuring out how to take care of Alexa. My mom and my sister will help. I would just go to AZ to stay with Mom/Holly except Alexa has her early intervention preschool and speech therapy that are here in OR. I know that worrying isn't helping, but it is sure hard not to. Well, here are a couple of cute pictures just to cheer you up after all that depressing whining.