She's here! Our April baby came in March

April 12, 2005

My beautiful granddaughter arrived 3 weeks early on March 30! As the

ultrsound showed she does have pretty severe B/L clubfoot. After a lot

of searching and researching we finally found a doctor in Knoxville

that trained with Dr. Ponsetti! It was quite by serendipity that we

found him though. My granddaughter and her mom and dad were referred

to Dr. Madigan at Knoxville Orthopedic Center, one of the 2 pediatric

orthopedists there. We all went to the first appointment planning on

just a consult in the beginning. In his office he started examining

Bren's feet in great detail and educating us on what was going on

physiologically with them. Then he started explaining about the

Ponsetti Methhod! We just kind of dropped our jaws and stared at him

for a minute - then in unison our whole little family group said 'You

use the Ponsetti Method??!!!' He seemed equally shocked that we were

so educated about Ponsetti. He gave us a little more history on

Dr.Ponsetti himself and explained that yes, he had trained, certified,

etc., with him. We told him when we did our search for someone who

used this method we never saw his name on the list of registered

doctors at IU and his team nurse practioner said she was going to

find out why he was not listed because he should certainly be there!

Bren got her first set of casts that day - she was the only one not to

thrilled about being there. She will probably have 9-12 castings and

have the tendons lengthend along the way, the braces, etc. Dr. Madigan

said clubfoot was very rare in girls and for some reason equally hard

to correct in girls. By the end of the first appointment we were all

very impressed with him and his team. They were all terrific and

really good with baby Bren. The only down part of this so far has been

that Bren was very jaundiced and of course that meant checking blood

several times. That meant several trips to the Children's Hospital so

someone very, very experienced could draw her blood. Yesterday she got

her second casting and same as with the first one she was grouchy for

about 24 hrs and then got over it. We are crossing our fingers that

everything will go according to schedule but whether it does or not

I'm sure we're going to but a lot of mileage on this board!

Thanks everyone!

Liz

mim2g&b

(and mother of johnna71

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