PFFD VSG2

My daughter, Olivia (she turns 4 in June), has her first lengthening surgery scheduled for May 9th. Her surgery will be performed by Dr. Davidson at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

Olivia had her super hip/knee/ankle surgery in early August. Dr. Paley performed her surgery. Olivia was 26 months old at the time of surgery. She was in the operating room for about 11 hours. Since she was under anesthesia for so long, they put her in the Pediatric ICU for the first night of post surgery. Dr. Paley said that her surgery went well. He was able to do everything he needed and wanted to do in order to prepare her for lengthening.

I have attached some pictures of Olivia and her prosthesis (the same one she got in October 2005). These pictures were taken on Jan. 5, 2006 when Olivia was about 19 months old. The first 2 pictures show her prosthesis. The 3rd picture shows her without her prosthesis. The other pictures show her wearing her prosthesis.

Olivia finally got her prosthesis on Thursday, October 27th. (She was 16½ months old.) She didn’t like it. It didn’t hurt her … I made sure of that! But she just didn’t like it on her. Before she got her prosthesis, she was a pro at crawling and pulling herself up to standing. Now she would have to relearn those things all over again.

Olivia had her appointment with Dr. Paley last week. This was the first time for us to personally meet him. His schedule was really tight and he was only able to meet with us for a short time, but overall we were very impressed with him.

Olivia was born on June 11, 2004. We learned at my routine ultrasound while I was pregnant with Olivia that she would be born with a short left leg. Her left leg is about half the length of her right. Her left foot is at about the same level as her right knee. I don’t know the classification yet, but she has a short femur and fibular hemimelia.

We met with 3 pediatric orthopedic surgeons before choosing Dr. Herzenberg and Dr. Paley in Baltimore.