“Having a family is a lot like have your heart walk around outside your body”

For the last 36 hours we’ve been through a bit of turmoil in our little family. 

For those of you who know me or those who don’t but follow my blog, I talk endless about Josie our 5 year old little girl. My wife sums up Josie’s personality with the following sentence, “Josie is Jeff in a dress!”. Now don’t get me wrong, Josie is all girl. She loves princesses, plays with Barbies and of course ballet. She can tell a good Joke (ask her about Bob the duck). She has another side though that is rough and tough. She’ll make ramps for her bike, loves to run room to room and of course setting up pillows on the couch in order to maximum air. For play things in the backyard she has a BMX bike, hockey sticks and a baseball too!

Over the Christmas break my wife and I noticed that Josie walks with one of her feet twisted in. Quite substantially acutally, her left foot is turned about 60 degrees inward as she walks or when she runs. We kept a pretty good eye on this for a number of days and it persisted. I figured it couldn’t be that big of a deal, but we decided to make an appointment with our Orthopedist. The appointment was supposed to be last week, but on the day of the appointment we were hit with frozen rain. To be safe Lauri rescheduled it to this week. Our home is up on a hill in Sammamish and when freezing rain hits you don’t want to be away as you just might be spending the night in a hotel in Redmond. This was the right choice.

Yesterday I was in back to back meetings all day, so Lauri took Josie to the Doctor by herself. Through the afternoon my mobile phone rings a few times and I let it go to voicemail, I also notice in my inbox I have a number of voicemails. I don’t think much of it. With being in back to back meetings I wasn’t able to check them, all I know is that they are from my wife as it has her numbers in the call display.

Around 5:00 pm I’m able to connect with my wife and I can tell immediately something is wrong by the tone of her voice. Lauri, starts off calmy saying that, “Our Doctor says we need to get Josie into an Orthopedic Surgeon right away”, by the end of the sentence tears are taking over her words. I pack up and head home.

Prior to moving to the United States, I lived in Canada. On the prairies the nearest specialist was at least 3 hours away and you’d need to book it 90 days in advance. My mind raced with what could be so urgent in that our appointment with a surgeon is less than 24 hours from now. I get home with probably one of the longest 30 minute commutes I’ve ever had. I eventually get home and my wife explains what went down at the Doctor’s appointment.

The Doctor completed a number of range of motion tests with Josie and was quite surprised to hear that we hadn’t been advised of Josie’s hip problems. The Doctor was quite concerned that Josie does not have complete motion of her left hip.  In fact in comparison to her right she has a substantial lack of motion. There was a good chance that a series of braces might be required or even surgery. My heart sunk, I hugged my wife and held Josie probably as a close as I ever have and said I silent prayer. We don’t have much for family here (well actiually we have none), Lauri is my best friend, so it wasn’t like we had friends around our family to talk. We took it easy, played Uno with Josie, read her a few stories and tried to get to bed early. Josie had an appointment at 8:00 with a surgeon in Bellevue and in order to get us all there in time we’d be up at 6:00 am. This all seemed so surreal.

So we went to sleep, meanwhile I’m fighting a nasty head cold and Lauri and I both ended up tossing and turning most of the night. I’d try and remind myself in the scheme of things that this couldn’t be that big of a deal could this be? It couldn’t be cancer, that makes no sense. Then of course my mind races to my Dad who 6 years ago was given only 6 months to live (he’s still going strong Today) and my father-in-law who lost the battle to cancer almost 7 years ago. I shake that thought away. You know a tired body, stress and bedtime just don’t mix. It makes you think crazy things. I eventually fall to sleep around 3 am and by 6 am I decide to just get out of bed as sleep is just not working. I notice Lauri has already gotten up out of bed already. She didn’t sleep much either. I’m exhausted and just want this day to end (the night before I only got about 4 hours sleep as well as I had tossed and turned with my head cold, but that is another story).

I wake Josie up around 6:45 and she just wants to roll over and go back to bed, but we get her dressed and she’s excited that I’m going to go to the Doctor with her, we head out the door, I follow her and Lauri off to the Doctor. As we drive along Lake Sammamish and the sun is rising I see her waving back at me from Lauri’s rear window.

We get to the Doctor’s office, we’re the only ones there. Josie and I practice letters and numbers in one of her coloring books while mom fills out insurance records and registration data. In no time at all we see the Doctor. He repeats the range of motion tests and notices the problems that the Orthopedic doctor did. He has Josie walk down the hall and later run and he and another Doctor in the hall comment on how her left foot is substantially turned in. My heart drops.

We return to his office and I wonder what’s next…. He goes on to tell us that this could be something or could be nothing. We need watch it closely for the next year to see if she grows out of it. Many years ago they would immediately strap a brace on the child, but often found that it did nothing. He did not want to do an X-Ray as they didn’t want to inundate Josie with the radiation.

So we sit here tonight, tired and grateful that we didn’t get worse news. On one hand I’m left wondering, should we get a second opinion or should we just wait and see. We’ve got a follow up appointment with her Doctor to discuss more.

To be honest I am thankful that we’re dealing with something that is not a debilitating disease. This is not cancer and I could never imagine how parents make it through that kind of thing with their childrenI can say is that. All I can say is children are a like have your heart walk around outside your body.