Followup: Juni, Congenital Hip Dislocation, and Spica Cast

After three months in the cast, Juni was set free. All seems to be progressing properly. The transition appliance, which supplies rigidity from the blue plastic form, is fulltime for a while then goes to naps and nighttime only.

Her crawling mobility is increased with the power from both feet now readily available. Her pelvis rocks left to right, much as some reptiles' do, when she gets going. She has also figured out how to pull herself up! You may recall she was doing that regularly when the dislocation issue was discovered and the cast prescribed.

Through this all, she has been a normal kid--happy sometimes, grumpy others. Her spirit is clearly resilient, and her sister Lily is obviously excited to have her playmate back in a way that permits them both to explore the world a little more aggressively than the past 90 days have allowed.

Juni, Congenital Hip Dislocation, and Spica Cast

A month short of her first birthday, Juni's parents discovered she had a displaced hip. It happened this way: The sisters were rasslin' and when that ended in loud noises and tears, Joe and Sarah thought perhaps Juni had injured a foot. Off to the Emergency Room for the Right Now X-ray. Good news: Nothing broken. They're on their way out of the hospital, relieved, when the X-ray tech comes up behind them and invites them back in. "I'm seeing something on the X-ray," he said. And there it was. Sarah, whose sister had CHD early on, had noticed the manifestations of this in Juni's crawling, but her concerns and observations had been discounted by the doctor.

The course of action was to relocate the ball of the femur in the socket. And then the spica cast, all under anesthesia. Wikipedia tells us a spica cast is one where there is a smaller cast branching from a larger one; hence, a wrist cast that includes a branch for the thumb would be a spica. There are subspecies of this critter, and what Juni ended up with was a one-and-a-half hip spica. One branch goes to her ankle, and on the other side it stops above the knee.

So that's the medical part. Oh, and three months is the time part, with a remove-and-replace midterm because these li'l ones just grow so fast! The parenting part: Juni was just pulling herself up to walk and this will frustrate her progress! So dad and I are busy designing machines for Juni. Joe came up with a great little table which allows her to sit comfortably--note the legs are splayed out--and do stuff with one year old toys on a tray with a lip so they're less likely to be launched (good in theory). As for our mobility aids? Well we tried, and cleverly at that, but she surprised us all: She developed her own point A to point B techniques, shown here

It's no summer festival for Juni, and it's all new for her sister Lily who is used to a playmate who doesn't tote literal pounds of plaster of paris. And Juni has discovered how, if she gets on her back, she can use sophisticated counterbalancing techniques to get her dorsal side up.

What it is from here: A window on the personality of this wonder-child who is teaching us about perseverance and spirit and acceptance.

Grandma and Grampa are proud of all four in this family.

About five weeks to go at this writing.