Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Kyle Begins Treatment for the Charcot Arthropathy


So they have this new cast they have come up with to treat people with charcot arthropathy called a total contact cast.  People with diabetes are very susceptible to getting horrible sores on their feet if anything rubs them wrong.  It is quite the process of a series of layers.  This cast is totally molded to Kyle's foot so that it can't rub or move around creating sores. On the top of the cast he wears a knee high black boot (or "The Beast" as Susan named it when she had to wear it to not one but two of her children's weddings) to protect it.  The great thing is that he can put a reasonable amount of weight on his foot.  He isn't totally dependent on the crutches.  So that was the bright spot of the day.  It will be changed every 2 weeks.  They don't expect any healing of the broken bones to show up for at least a month so he won't have any more tests until then.  They are hoping he will only be in the casts for a couple of months and then move onto to braces or whatever comes next.  The doctor said we will be fighting this off and on pretty much forever. 

Did I mention we love Dr. Heninger and his staff!!!  We definitely feel we have ended up with the doctor we need to have to treat this problem.  I was somewhat molified that Kyle got a personal phone call from his previous foot doctor the other day to apologize for not doing more about the problem.  When I spoke with his nurse to tell her we wouldn't be returning she was very surprised that after 6 weeks of treating it as an infection they hadn't actually ever run any kind of blood culture or anything to verify it was actually an infection.  Needless to say we are done with the foot doctors at the Logan Regional Hospital.






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