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Cassidy's Story
CHAPTER SIX
Second Recovery
One of the hardest things about Cassidy's recovery was trying to move her. She was almost 7 years old at this stage and was getting heavy and awkward. Also, we had to keep her legs at a certain angle and this, combined with the lack of a spica or braces made it very tricky indeed. It was mostly daddy who did all the lifting, with the ever-present pillows under her legs to keep them angled right.
She used a commode for toileting for a little while, but soon was able to use the toilet. She returned to school and the other kids were fascinated with the wheelchair. (They had each drawn and sent a card to her in the hospital, and watching the nurses receive this delivery of more than 30 cards was a sight to behold!) There was one big boy at school who used to bully Cassidy before her operation. The wheelchair solved all that when Cassy decided to use it as a weapon. She rammed the bully with it a couple of times and it wasn't long before he was at her beck and call, fetching and carrying things for her at her demand...that's our girl!!
An unforseen problem at school was toileting. Cassy couldn't do this alone and because of its nature, a male intergration aide was out of the question. A female aide had limitations on the amount of weight that could be lifted. So it boiled down to Mum! My stomach muscles, which had been strengthened by lifting her when she was in the spica at 2 years old, came into play again. We would make sure she went to the toilet before school and I would come every recess and take her to the toilet. We had moved into town by then, so it wasn't too hard. The school had also knocked a wall out in the library toilet especially to accommodate Cassidy and had installed rails.
Regular hydrotherapy helped strenghten her muscles, which were weakened by inactivity and also a little out of whack as the surgery had altered her muscle 'alignment'. It wasn't long before Cassy was up on crutches, but only after a visit back to the RCH for a progress check and to have a session with the physiotherapist to ensure she used the crutches properly. Getting in and out of the wheelchair had to be performed a certain way as well, to avoid injury and twisting.
Cassidy progressed well, but developed a limp. The scars from this operation were bigger than the first surgery. The first resulted in one fine line about 6 inches long running down the side of her 'bikini line' and a scar where they accidentally cut her whilst removing the spica. This last operation cut 'across' the muscles instead of running with them, so the pull of the skin and muscles during healing caused the 6 inch scars (on her outer thighs) to go 'keloid' or raised, wide and red. We queried the possibility of scar reduction, but were told to do nothing at this stage as the plates would come out using the same scars in a year's time. The scarring didn't seem to concern Cassidy and to this day she never complains about the look of them, just that they are 'numb and annoying'.
The plates did come out in a year, with a brief stay in the RCH and we continued the routine of regular trips to Melbourne for check ups and x-rays.
Around this time we decided to pursue legal action against the doctor who had missed diagnosing the condition in the first place, but to no avail. Even though we used some of the best medical lawyers in Australia, the result was that the regular tests for DDH are not 100% accurate and it was our word against the doctor's that we had alerted him to certain indicative symptoms.
Cassidy's limp got worse and worse. Some insensitive teacher nick-named her 'Hop Along Cassidy' and used to say things like "...come on, hurry up, Cassidy-last..." We were outraged and spoke to the principal about it. I don't remember what happened after that, but even though we were angry at the teacher, the nick-name Hop Along Cassidy seemed pretty clever and it was strangely coincidental that we had named her Cassidy in the first place!
She continued to be active, deciding that now she wanted to learn Irish dancing. She had perfect rhythm and memorised the steps easily, but could never lift her legs up high as her thigh muscles were under-developed. The Irish dancing helped to build them up a little, but we could tell it was an effort for her.
We encouraged bike riding (as carefully as possible!) and she tackled hiking, rock climbing and abseiling with determination. She would always get tired out and the limp would get worse, but she didn't even realise she had a limp.
I do remember one incident where she was upset by her condition though. There was a festival in town and Cassidy and her friends were walking laps of the main street, taking in all the festivities. After a few laps, Cassy was too sore and tired to continue. Her friends, excited by all the activities, continued on and left Cassidy behind, where we found her crying.
It was obvious then that she was not recovering as well as we hoped and with the surgeon confirming this, we prepared Cassy and ourselves for yet another operation.
David and I had split up by then, but we remained best of friends and continued the family unit for all things related to the children, especially Cassidy's treatment.
