Hi all,
Just wanted to update you all on Spencer. We noticed he was acting kind of funny this week and so we called his hip ortho, Dr. Carrol, at Shriners SLC and she ordered x-rays. Yep you guessed it, Spencer had broken his hip. It was a very strange fracture right through the ball of the femur. No one is really sure how it happened, but I have a theory that his spinal fusion shifted the stress distribution and the applied loads in his skeletal frame, and his hip ball likely had a congenital flaw which finally gave way under the newly shifted loads (that's the engineer in me ). I asked Dr. Carrol about this and she said it was very likely so since the break was pathological and there was no evidence of other trauma in the area, and since Spencer does not have brittle bone disease.
At any rate, that was the bad news. The good news is that Dr. Carrol was able to set the hip without having to go in with plates and screws. So Spencer was able to avoid additional surgery so soon after his spinal fusion. Now Spencer is in a spica cast for about 6 weeks, but otherwise looks to mend very soon, and is already smiling after the reduction procedure. We have not seen any smiles from him for almost two weeks so it is really good to see, since it means we have corrected the problem causing him pain.
Thanks again to everyone on this forum, for being there to listen and encourage when we need you.
Robert
Just wanted to update you all on Spencer. We noticed he was acting kind of funny this week and so we called his hip ortho, Dr. Carrol, at Shriners SLC and she ordered x-rays. Yep you guessed it, Spencer had broken his hip. It was a very strange fracture right through the ball of the femur. No one is really sure how it happened, but I have a theory that his spinal fusion shifted the stress distribution and the applied loads in his skeletal frame, and his hip ball likely had a congenital flaw which finally gave way under the newly shifted loads (that's the engineer in me ). I asked Dr. Carrol about this and she said it was very likely so since the break was pathological and there was no evidence of other trauma in the area, and since Spencer does not have brittle bone disease.
At any rate, that was the bad news. The good news is that Dr. Carrol was able to set the hip without having to go in with plates and screws. So Spencer was able to avoid additional surgery so soon after his spinal fusion. Now Spencer is in a spica cast for about 6 weeks, but otherwise looks to mend very soon, and is already smiling after the reduction procedure. We have not seen any smiles from him for almost two weeks so it is really good to see, since it means we have corrected the problem causing him pain.
Thanks again to everyone on this forum, for being there to listen and encourage when we need you.
Robert
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