My daughter is 2 1/2 years old now and just went through, probably one of the most horrible things that will happen to her. With any luck she will not remember when she gets older.� In�April of 2006 I was told that she probably had hip dysplasia, the technical term for dislocated hips, and scoliosis. My heart skipped a beat and�I almost passed out. My normal healthy daughter�who runs, jumps, climbs and plays has a dislocated hip?�Well I had x-rays�taken immediately come to find out both of her hips were dislocated and she had a slight�case of scoliosis.��Her left hip was so far out of place I couldn’t understand how she could do all the things she was doing.�I later found out from the�orthopedic specialist that since she was born with�the left hip�out of place, which after going unnoticed for so long made the right one come out also,her muscles and ligaments just compensated for the dislocation allowing her to go on normally undetected.��
So anyway while waiting for the appointment with the specialist I did some research on line. The only risk factor my daughter had for�having hip dysplasia�was being a girl.� Okay in case you are wondering i’ll let you know the risk factors: first born child,�being a girl (is less common in boys) and�heredity.�� I think there�are some others but can not�find my documents right now. If�needing more information just search the�web for hip dysplasia there is a lot of good information to be found.��
So okay when we finally got an appointment to see the orthoperdic specialist� she said the only option in�my daughter’s�case,�since she was 2 years old now, was hip surgery and wearing a spica cast for three months. Now if they would have caught this when she was an infant or before she was 18 months old she may not have had to have�major surgery.� They first try a brace then if that doesn’t work they use just a spica cast no surgery. Then if those things�don’t work� they will do surgery.�As if my 2 year old daughter having major surgery wasn’t enough,let me explain to you what a spica cast is.�
There are a few variations my daughter had two of them. The one she had for the first six weeks started at her chest and went the whole way down both her legs the only thing sticking out were her little toes and everything from the chest up. There also was a bar between her legs to ensure that they stayed in the proper postion. As if it wasn’t hard enough to carry my daughter in a body cast.�They leave an opening for going to the bathroom, if not potty trained you get to tuck a diaper inside the cast. You also have to buy those pads they make for bladder control problems and line the diaper with that for extra leakage control. Trust me you don’t want to have your son or daughter getting pee inside their cast�or anything else.� My daughter had�”the back door trots” and it went everywhere, I had a heck of a time cleaning her up. Luckily that happened�three days before her cast was to be changed. But still the stench was awful. The second cast she had for the remaining six weeks was a little lower on the chest and stopped above her right knee.�The other leg was still the whole way down to her toes since that is the side they operated on.�Also on various occassions I found pennies and snacks inside of her cast. The doctors tell you to make sure you keep the top of the cast covered but, since the only position my daughter could be in was lying down everything went down the back of her shirt and into the cast.��
Now there were no orthopedic specialists near by� so we had to drive one hour and forty-five minutes to her appointments, so in total� we had to go to the hospital six different times before and after surgery�and still have at least two or three more trips before it is all overwith. Now the worst part was over the next month while we were waiting for her hip surgery was�we had to try to figure out how to explain to a two year old that she was going to go to sleep at the hospital and wake up with a cast on most of her body and not be able to walk.� Now they did have a doll at the hospital with a spica cast on so you could show your child what they would have on. Yet again my daughter being only two didn’t exactly understand. So the day finally came her surgery was at 7a but we had to be there at 5:30am to check in. Well anyway to make a long story shorter the four hour�surgery went perfectly. Now during the hip surgery they did a pelvic osteotomy (cutting of the bone) and removed two cenimeters from her left femur.�I later found out they used a metal clamp�to hold her femur bone together�which will have to be removed when they feel it has completely healed. She has been a very strong little girl through all of this. During surgery they gave her an epidural and left it in til the next afternoon for pain control. They sent us home, a few hours after removing the epidural,�with Tylenol 3 for pain, which she had a lot of once they removed the epidural.
She actually adjusted very well after about a week and finally realizing that it wasn’t coming off no matter how much she cried. Well the pain medication didn’t last for very long I had to give it to her every 4-6 hours for the first two days because she was in so much pain.� So when we went back for her two week follow up appointment I asked for a different pain medication something not so strong, I didn’t want her getting addicted. They gave me a script for valium which did absolutely nothing for her and they wouldn’t give me anything else. So we had quite a few sleepless nights for a while.
The benefit of all of this�other than the obvious is since she couldn’t do much of anything but watch�T.V.� she�can now count to �ten in spanish, knows the alphabet song, talks very well and�knows her shapes and colors. She now has to wear a brace to sleep and a few hours while she is awake, a total of twelve hours a day, for three months. She hates it and we both get very little sleep. They say it will take her three to six months before she can walk again, well it’s been two and she crawls and walks holding on to things she has physical therapy once a week and is doing very well.
The down side to all of this is they manually set the right leg during surgery and it didn’t go back in the whole way so if wearing the brace doesn’t help any, then she has to go through the whole procedure again on the right side. I don’t know if we can go through this again. If she has to have the other surgery then if we are lucky she will be potty trained and walking by the time she is four.
I just wanted to make more people aware of�hip dsyplasia because I found out it is more common than I thought. It is also missed a lot, �there was a five year old girl I met at the hospital and her parents just found out that she has hip dysplasia. She was often complaining of knee pain well come to find out hip pain is often felt in the knee.�There was also a boy at the hospital with hip dysplasia who was probably ten or eleven years old and wearing a spica cast. I don’t know if the doctors could come up with better testing for this or not but it would definetly be worth looking into. The one web site i visited said that many cases of hip replacement in mature adults is due to undetected hip dysplasia. That is definetly something to think about.�
Reference:
- Search the web for hip dysplasia there is a lot of information out there
