Great News
The left side has 100% femoral head involvement with total collapse.
We visited Dr. Standard on June 13th, 2011. We received really good news. Christopher’s left hip has bone regrowth!!! It’s not pretty by any stretch of imagine but we have the white fluff. He said the right side has been frozen in time. Dr. Standard also said that he was amazed at Christopher’s range of motion on the left hip. With most kids that have a 100% femoral head involvement and complete collapse, he is going in for surgery due to poor range of motion but because Christopher’s range of motion is so great, we have escaped that so far. If things ever change, then we’ll know the alternative. We are just grateful to have options. Our local doctors just gave us doom and gloom and no sunny outlook. Also, Dr. Standard said he could run a little. All Christopher heard was ‘he can run’! He ran out of the doctor’s office with the biggest smile on his face.
Three Steps Back
We were doing so well. Then, Christopher fell at Vacation Bible School this past week. He was having such a good time seeing all of his friends. He hasn’t been in a school environment for more than two months now. He wasn’t running when he fell – he was fast walking. He wasn’t wearing flip flops – he was in tennis shoes. He didn’t fall directly on his hip – he fell on his knees. However, he fell REALLY hard on concrete. He could barely walk. We immediately went for x-rays and talked to Dr. Standard via the web chat. He looked over Christopher’s x-rays but he didn’t break anything. He is on limited activity for the next three days or so and Motrin. I’m so grateful that he takes the time for those web chats. They are invaluable to his current patients, potential patients and families that are just trying to figure everything out.
Save-A-Limb Ride (October 22, 2011)
Our next (in person) visit with Dr. S is on October 17th. We purposely planned around the Save-A-Limb bike ride. We have our rooms reserved at the Hackerman Patz house and will see our dear friends the Hay, Foote, Triani, Dierkhising, Garman, Hagan, Knezic, Apodoca, Schaeffer, Haycraft and many more great families that we have only met via email or FaceBook on this perthes journey (if I left out a name, I apologize in advance).
If you would like to help Christopher make a difference, please make a donation in honor of him for his team ‘Perthes Awareness’ at the Save-A-Limb ride. To help bring awareness to Perthes, Earl Cole is asking anyone with a Twitter account to follow him so we can spread the word.
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