No more cast!

As Fancy Nancy says, I am ecstatic.

Sam's cast came off two days early on Monday, February 8. The reasons aren’t exactly great; finally he exploded so far up the back of the cast I knew I couldn’t have gotten all of it. I called first thing Monday morning and was told to bring him right in. As soon as the home health aide and the visiting nurse were on their way out, I was calling Sam’s physical therapist to tell her we couldn’t do PT that day.

Jim and I ended up bringing Maya with us since we had not expected to go Monday to get his spica cast removed. Chris, Jim's mom, was going to come and help us out that Wednesday so Maya wouldn’t have to get dragged on the trip, but we had no choice.

When we saw Sam's pediatric orthopedist, Dr.Albright, he asked when he was set to see Sam. Wednesday, we told him, and suddenly I worried he would just have us wait until then to take the cast off and X-ray Sam, but he sent us right down to get that cast taken off, only three and a half weeks after Sam had surgery to correct coxa vara on his right hip.

(The left hip will be done April 8.)

We stumbled upon the oddly placed and obscure cast room, and everyone seemed confused. Apparently we’d been directed right there instead of to registration. But no matter. Two guys in scrubs came in wielding huge tools. Sam was laying on his back, and getting nervous.

“Iyana?” he cried out at one point, wanting to see his sister, and she came over to him and kissed his knee, and then his arm so he could feel it.

One man held what looked like an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner while the other took what looked like a circular saw and began cutting. It was loud.

Maya hid behind a curtain, peeking out occasionally.

“Please be careful of hurting my brother!” she called out.

I tried not to laugh or cry at that second, but I had to keep petting Sam and telling him it was going to be OK. He was really still and really good for about the first 10 minutes, but when the tech started using sort of reverse pliers to pry the thing open, it started to ache. I could tell he was doing his best not to hurt the cut, but it was impossible.

“Get many of these?” I asked him.

“This is my first one, can you tell?” he asked back. I’d been kidding. He hadn’t necessarily put me at ease. But I'm sort of kidding again, I knew he was fine to remove the cast, I just know it's pretty rare to come across a kid in a body cast.

Finally, he got one large chunk of leg off.

Sam immediately started screaming. Not crying. Full-on screaming -- high pitched, pig-in-a-slaughter-house screaming. As soon as the air hit his skin I saw a rash instantly emerge. Under the tiny red bumps were large peeling scales.

Maya’s eyes were wide and her brows were furrowing and she cried, “Ooh!”

I motioned to Jim to hug her; at this point Sam was clasping both my arms and I was hunched over him in a sort of awkward hug.

The final 10 minutes or so of getting this thing off, I stayed like this, and Sam cried, and Maya almost cried but didn’t. She just looked so concerned, and about 20 years older than she is.

Finally he cracked the rest of the thing off, while Sam screamed. I guess the air hitting that skin really hurt, and the incision had to hurt too.

Finally I was able to lift him off the table, and he seemed so small and frail, like a little snail out of its shell. I had no idea how to hold him so I didn’t put pressure on his incision, but finally worked out a system. He nestled right into me, and I felt the warmth of his whole body against mine, and just drank it in. I had so missed his core next to mine. And I get my Maya snuggles, but she is less likely to stay still these days, and she is getting very big.... and trying to comfort a child post-surgery is much more difficult with this barrier.

We went back up to X-ray, and I just held Sam, and we literally left a trail of white flakey skin that was falling off.

People in the waiting room just looked at him, horrified and wondering what happened to him, and I was thankful to sit next to a little kid, around 10, who just looked right at him, then up to me and asked matter-of-factly, “What happened to him?”

As we chatted, Sam was called for X-rays, and then back into Dr. Albright’s office. He peeled the bandage off the five- or six-inch incision while Sam cried, and then had me help pick off the smaller tape underneath. Hard for him to do with the gloves on, so I used my nail, and a suture caught on one of them, and he screamed.

About an inch of the thing was almost open, filleted. It looked raw, but not red, and Dr. Albright was happy with his progress.

He is making strides, but a week later is not walking. The doctor said it would be three to four weeks, but I’m not so sure. He has said he can’t walk, but we keep telling him he will. He is so happy being out of that thing, and he crawls. Jm asked him a couple days ago if he was going to try and walk, and he said, “Not yet.”

He’s pulling up on chairs and tables. He’s cruising. He has gotten on his riding fire engine and can power it with both legs. He has stood unassisted. Today he is cruising round and round his train table for the very first time.

In a way it’s like watching him learn to walk again. It’s like getting to meet this milestone again, and I guess it will again in May or June. You’d think I wouldn’t be as proud and giddy and excited this time around, but I am. Maya has been really encouraging mostly, and very rarely goes and just takes something from him.

His incision looks much better too, and now Jim has told him he’ll have a cool scar. Jim calls him an X Man. Sam likes that.

We’re trying to catch up on everything that has been neglected, but of course we haven’t, and we took the past three-day weekend to just be ... enjoy each other, relax and revel in the fact that it was just the four of us. After an influx of visitors -- thank God, I don't know what I'd have done without them -- it's nice to just be together. I’ll try to keep the blogs coming to update more frequently.

I can’t express my relief at getting this thing off after just three and a half weeks. I can't even fathom having it on the original prediction of six.

I tried to chronicle a day while he was in the cast, and I’m going to include it here. Of course, I couldn’t finish it. And of course, I left a bunch of stuff out, but I want to paste it here so everyone will understand why they heard so little from me while Sam was in his cast, and just in general.

Some Thursday in early February, I don’t know which one...

8:15 a.m. Jim gets me up. This is wonderful because he’s been up since 5:30 a.m. with Sam, who can no longer sleep. He has (fortunately for me, not so much for him) just spent the last 20 minutes drying Sam’s cast after he had, um, sort of exploded up the back of the cast. This isn’t pretty, but we are obsessive about cleaning it and drying it so he won’t experience “skin break-down.”

8:30 a.m. I have my coffee in hand, and am racing around to get dressed and look as if I have washed my hair in the last three days, which I haven’t. Luckily because my mother-in-law Chris is here, Maya is actually dressed, fed and ready to go. It’s a miracle.

8:45 a.m. I check my email, realizing I have to fire one work-related one off before I’m gone all day.

8:50 a.m. I hoist Sam up and onto the couch so I can change his shirt, wash his face and put some ladies’ small sweat shorts on him. The extra smalls had worked well, but I had bought smalls so I could wear them when he’s done. They are way too big.

8:55 a.m. We should have already left, but I am still struggling to hold Sam with one arm while jamming his arm into his coat pocket. I will need to weigh him tonight just so I actually know how much I’m lifting. Chris is scrambling to make sure Maya has all her winter gear to take to preschool.

8:57 a.m. I run back into the house to get Maya’s bag of winter gear.

9:12 a.m. We park in handicapped parking at Maya’s preschool and I haul Sam’s wheelchair out of the back. I want him to go in today so he can see the kids.

9:20 a.m. Chris and I wheel Sam back to the car and I spend about 20 minutes trying to arrange his wheelchair in the back so it won’t slam against the back window or into his head. Frustrated, I give up and start to drive to Trader Joe’s.

9:42 a.m. I pull over at Blockbuster to hoist the wheelchair back out and try again, as it is slamming against the back window.

10:15 a.m. We arrive at Trader Joe’s and I hoist the chair back out, set it up, and then hoist Sam out of the car and try to arrange him in the chair.

10:45 a.m. Hoist Sam back into the car, collapse the chair and hoist it back into the car before spending another 15 minutes arranging it just so in the back of my RAV, and pile the groceries around it.

11:15 a.m. Pull into Target parking lot so I can run in for extra-small shorts while Chris waits in the car with Sam, but he says he wants to go in. I acquiesce and move the car to handicapped parking and start the hoisting process all over again.

11:45 a.m. I spend too much money at Target on toys and DVDs, which is dumb because I still have boxes of unopened toys in my bedroom. I try to force the chair in on top of the groceries, and have to remove the chair and the groceries and start all over again.

12:03 p.m. I pull into a parking lot near Target to take everything out and start over again. I think I have a system now.

12:15 p.m. I try to feed Sam lunch, but he’s so tired and cranky he does not eat. I have completely overdone it with him today. I change his diaper and blow dry his cast with a cool hair dryer, and put him to bed.

1:30 p.m. I get an email saying my 2 p.m. phone interview with the CEO of an engine manufacturer is cancelled, so I send an email to another source while Sam is asleep, the CEO of a boatbuilder, who calls me back around 2 p.m.

2:02 p.m. Sam wakes up and is terribly upset. He wants cheesy popcorn but only wants me to get it for him. I cradle the phone on my shoulder, trying to absorb the statistics on boat exports for a story I’m writing, and rush to get him his popcorn.

2:15 p.m. Repeat above.

2:25 p.m. Repeat above.

2:35 p.m. Chris comes and whispers would I like her to pick Maya up from school. At this point I have given Sam the whole bag of popcorn, but am still on my interview. I whisper to her that I will go just as soon as I’m done with my interview. I am typing the CEO’s comments the whole time.

2:45 p.m. Continue interviewing my source, even though I know I am supposed have left to pick Maya up from school.

2:50 p.m. Hang up the phone after thanking the CEO for his time, race out the door without a coat to get Maya, and dial my editor while driving.

3:07 p.m. Hug Maya.

3:20 p.m. Arrive home with Maya, and Chris informs me that Sam has pooped. Since Jim and I are the only ones who can lift him, I hoist him out of his spica chair and take him back to change his diaper.

3:22 p.m. I cannot find the maxi pads that I use to line his size 1 newborn diapers that we tuck inside his spica cast. After much scrambling, I find one and begin the blowdrying process. Sam is not happy about this. I tuck in the small diaper and maxi, and locate a size 6 diaper to wrap around the whole thing.

3:45 p.m. I help Maya do the Hello Kitty puzzle I got her while Sam puts together his new Cars puzzle.

4 p.m. T.V. I love T.V.

5 p.m. Try to decide what we’ll have for dinner. I decide to make a broccoli casserole and wild rice to go with the delicious chicken Chris made and brought.

5:15 p.m. Bring drinks to the kids, and peel them some bananas.

6 p.m. Scramble to get the casserole made after prepping the rice. Then it occurs to me that the kids won’t eat the chicken with tomatoes and mushrooms, so I poke around the freezer for an easy protein.

6:15 p.m. Assemble the casserole.

6:45 p.m. Realize I should have already started the rice, and the breaded haddock for the kids takes 30 minutes. There’s no way this dinner is getting ready before 7:30. As I set to begin catching up, Sam needs his diaper change, so I stop everything to change it and blow-dry his cast. This takes 30 minutes.

7:15 p.m. Kids are starving, so I wash Maya an apple while Chris cuts up a pear for Sam. We give them gifts she brought to distract them, a puzzle for Sam and modeling clay for Maya.

7:30 p.m. The rice is not done at all. The directions are crap, apparently.

7:45 p.m. I ask Maya to wash her hands, and struggle to get Sam’s hands wiped with a Wet One while he boxes me.

8 p.m. We are finally eating.

All this being said, and while I’m not looking forward to the next surgery, I am dreading it much less than the last one. We know much more this time, know how to handle and treat his pain and everything else... And in hindsight, it doesn't seem like a long time. It feels like he's been out of that thing forever. He is asking when he'll walk again, and I do feel really bad putting him right back through this again after he gets his legs back, but I don't want him in that spica in the summertime. If he was uncomfortable in winter, I can't imagine August.

Soon this will all be over!