An Unexpected Twist....

During the arthrogram yesterday the surgeon did not find what he was expecting. Instead of a dislocated and rather poorly formed ball and socket they found that it was surprisingly well formed and stable after all. Summers problem seems to be associated with a lack of twist in the femur caused by poor muscle control during her development. This is all great news as instead of having to do complicated things around the joint all they need to do is cut to rotate the lower part of the femur to bring it into the correct alignment. They want to wait until late 2008 to do this next op so we can have a great start to the year without all the things to cope with we were expecting.

This all means that Summer and Kathy were back home yesterday afternoon and we were all able to celebrate at a great New Years Party with friends! No brace, no changes, just our beautiful daughter smiling away as ever!!

Our surgeon seems to be enjoying the challenge of Summer He has never seen anything like this before and she is in his top two of his interesting patients. This twist is measured to be at 110degrees. He has never seen or heard of this this greater than 70 degrees before so was certainly surprised that things are as they are.

As a separate issue there seems to be something else rather remarkable happening in her hip which also hasn't been seen by our surgeon before. Summer has much better control of the hip muscles on the inside of the joint than the outside due to the spinal defect. This is a problem as it is the outside muscles which are more useful in mobility and hip control than these inside ones. Due to the rotation of the femur the muscle which works well may now be on the outside of the hip giving her the movement and control where there previously wouldn't have been any.

He will check this idea out some more as he was thinking on his feet a bit talking to us but what an amazing scenario if it’s right. The relocation of this muscle from the inside to the outside is something he has done before surgically but in Summer’s case it seems that it is happening all by itself!! I will update if this theory is correct.

So we are starting the new year in a much better place than we expected. May it continue through out the year. If its anything like last year its going to be exciting for sure!!

Thanks to everyone who is praying for Summer, no doubt God is at work in her life and those around her who all, especially us, seem to growing though this beautiful little girl. Take a look back to the first entry on this blog to remind yourself of how it all started, remarkable really.

Happy new Year...