Arden’s Knee Surgery Update
Earlier this week Arden had a surgery on his knees called a bilateral anterior distal femoral guided growth procedure. In layman’s terms, that means that they placed plates and screws in the front of his knees to restrict the growth on the front and allow the back to catch up over time. In this way, over the next year or so, the procedure will help to straighten Arden’s knees.
This was the first legitimate “day surgery” that Arden has ever had. For every other surgery that he’s had, we have always been admitted to a unit. We got to utilize the newly renovated Stollery Short Stay Unit (SSSU) and it was beautiful. The nurse who did all of our preoperative paperwork was lovely. She was direct and to the point but also took small moments to show extra kindness to Arden.
Arden came out of surgery sad, asking for mom and dad, but overall, doing well. He needed 0.5 Litres Per Minute of oxygen, which isn’t much at all! Unfortunately when Arden first woke up from surgery, the nurses tried to take him off his vent. This was a terrible idea! His oxygen saturation dropped into the 50s! Luckily he came up quickly once back on the vent, but we were disappointed to hear that they tried something so reckless directly post-operation.
That afternoon we stayed in the Short Stay Unit (SSU) for a couple hours while waiting for Arden to get back to his baseline. Once he was off oxygen and tolerating his feeds, we were discharged. We spent the night at our hotel across the street, watched movies and hockey and relaxed as a family. The next day we made the trek home and Arden has been recovering in his own environment ever since.
Arden’s knees have been sore and he’s been tired. He started butt scooting around a bit the fourth day after surgery, but before that wouldn’t travel anywhere unless lifted into his wheelie chair. We have read lots of books, watched lots of movies, played play dough and lego and cars. We’ve practiced ASL and worked on learning new words and sentences on his iPad speaking program (LAMP Words for Life). We’re grateful that it’s winter and it’s an excellent time to hunker down and do cozy activities!
XO, Rayel
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