We’re sorry it’s been a while since our last post. The past few weeks became a bit of a blur and Ollie’s recover was (we thought) going so very well that we didn’t really have much to blog about besides a few updates about his therapy. We honestly meant to give more updates, and were planning on a very celebratory post filled with cute pictures like this one of Ollie in his laser therapy goggles.
We honestly wish we’d posted about these last few weeks more, especially because we are now posting with some pretty shocking and bad news.
Yesterday, Ollie went in for his 8 week check up. His surgeon, Dr. Brourman, flew in from Idaho and took x-rays of the hip implant. Unfortunately, the x-rays showed the stem of the implant had subsided into his femur and was causing a gap of about a centimeter between the ball and cup of the implant. This separation was making Ollie turn his leg out slightly, which we had both noticed, and put his hip at too great a risk of future dislocation to leave it as it was. We made the difficult decision to undergo emergency repair surgery on his implant. Initially, Dr. Brourman wanted to simply replace the ball portion of the implant with a larger one, but that didn’t close the gap enough. The entire stem portion of the implant had to be removed and replaced in order to get the implant to fit correctly. Here’s a picture of his new incision right next to the one which was healing so nicely.
We are basically back to square one with his recovery. Because the implant is larger this time, and because the removal and replacement caused a small fissure in his femur, we are even more concerned about him potentially breaking his femur this time. We must be incredibly vigilant and not allow him to put any weight on his leg for the next eight weeks. We are extremely distraught because this means Ollie will have to endure more pain and discomfort, and the effort and money we have already spent on his physical therapy has all been for naught.
Ollie is home now, we just got him a few hours ago. Fortunately, he seems a lot happier this time than he was after the first surgery. We’re hoping that, because they only had to replace the stem and not the cup, the pain won’t be as bad. He’s also on a slightly different medication regimen, which Dr. Brourman hopes will not cause the delusion which we believe caused Ollie to cry so much over the first few days last time.
We started this blog to chronicle the ups and downs of this procedure and the recovery. It looks like we just hit our first big down moment, and it was tougher and more unexpected than we could have imagined. We thought we were only a few weeks away from being pretty much in the clear, and now we are starting over on a much more difficult and dangerous path. Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement. As tough as the last 36 hours have been, our belief in Ollie’s strength and ability to come through this like a champion has never wavered. He’ll be running around his yard this time next year and will be looking this happy all the time.
