Trigger Alert & Mama-Guilt: It's Been A Doozy of a Week

OK, so how weird is this ... We are traveling to Philadelphia on Sunday for Grace's annual appointment with her clubfoot doctor, scheduled for Monday afternoon. We haven't seen him since last June, when he said she's doing beautifully, wear those danged shoes, and stretch stretch stretch that little foot. Gotcha.

It's strange to think that a whole year has gone by, and now it's time for the verdict. And boy, did we come up short. Grace's treatment, since birth, involves what's called the Ponseti Method, at least for the most part. If I'm not mistaken (from what little I know of all of this), a true Ponseti follower seeks to avoid surgery, going by the route of serial casting and orthotic shoes. While our particular doctor, who works out of the Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania, studied at the knee of Ponseti himself and works with the method, he does involve surgery as well. So our little Grace had the surgery, clipping her little heel's tendon, at the age of 3 months. It was one of the worst experiences of my life to date, but Grace sailed through. Since then we've dealt with her sweet little leg in a cast for months on end, followed by the dreaded shoes. We've struggled with that blasted footwear. And in the course of this past year since her last visit, the shoes continued to be a terrible ordeal. She'd wear them for a bit, then develop horrific blisters, so the shoes stayed off so the toes could heal. Shoes back on, same festering blisters, shoes off. Off-on, off-on, week after week, month after month. Finally, a couple of months ago, she officially outgrew the shoes, and we were faced with choice: buy yet another new pair (straight out of our near-empty pockets, with no insurance coverage for such "optional" items) for the last couple of months before the appointment, or just wait and see what the doctor says. We opted for the latter, to forgo the shoes until we meet with the doc, but try to stay diligent with the stretching. Yeah ... that wasn't as easy as it sounds. I tried, usually during diaper changes while she was laying on the bed anyway, but it didn't last very long. The balm to all of this was a comment made to me by the guy who sold us the shoes last year. He was floored to see my prescription for the clunky contraption, saying in his 30 years of business, he hasn't seen these in nearly 15 years. What?! What do clubfoot patients do around here, I asked? He wasn't sure, but he said that docs here in northern NJ don't use them anymore. Just surgery and stretching, I guess. I was surprised but secretly glad, feeling a bit of that Mama-Guilt starting to slip away. I hoped for the best.

This has been a stomach churning week for me, for two reasons. First, I've gone into trigger-alert mode ... for traveling back to PA means traveling back in time, to the place of our nightmare. I felt this way last year too and wrote about it, finding that I'm feeling pretty much the same way but thankfully feeling blessed that the emotions are not quite as strong as they were last year. Healing is definitely occurring, thank God for that. Yet it's still going to be hard this time around, no doubt about it -- seeing the same roads, the same sights, the same stores, the same everything that we lived. Thankfully we won't have to see the church -- that would be torture, driving by that structure and recalling everything that happened within. I wish there was some kind of pill I could take, to simply wipe all of those memories out of my brain. I don't want to think about those people, those events, those shattered dreams. But our medical trip back to PA will indeed put it right back into my face, with no dulling pills to swallow. It's so hard to let it all go, to put it all behind.

On top of that emotional ride, I'm also starting to get nervous about Grace's foot and what the doctor might say. Now back to the weirdness of this tale. As the nerves are starting to brew, I get two hits on my blog from other moms of clubfoot kids -- two! What are the chances of that? Right during this same time where I can't get "clubfoot" out of my mind? Both moms were great, kind, empathetic, and supportive -- cool. I don't know anyone going through this so it was neat to feel connected in some way. And yet ... I then crossed an imaginary line into discovering too much information. There were links to other websites, to learn more about clubfoot and what's involved, what's to be expected, and so on. Unfortunately ... I kind of freaked.

One extremely informative site called Six Feet was unbelievably detailed, put together by a mom who needed a site years ago and never had one. Cool, I thought. Very helpful. But as I read, the Mama-Guilt kicked into full gear, especially when talking about the shoes, and statistics, and how crucial-vital-imperative it is that your child wear those shoes, no ifs-ands-or-buts. Many parents think they can relax when the child is "out of the woods" at age two or three, believing the foot looks OK so all is well, where as the statistics shake you up, with super high percentage rates of relapse during this oh-so-seemingly-comfortable phase ... yikes. I had been very upbeat and positive going into this home stretch before the appointment; now I'm scared silly. I look at her little foot constantly. Is it curved more than usual? Is it dropping when she walks? Does it feel tighter than usual? Is she doing this, or that ... ugh. Drives you crazy.

Is it horrible to say that I kind of like being a little ignorant? The more information I get under my belt, the worse I feel. Some folks feel encouraged by gathering facts and information, and that's great; apparently it doesn't work so well for me. I have no idea what to expect on Monday -- will she need a cast? More surgery? Or nothing at all? Prayers are appreciated, my friends -- for the emotional baggage opening up on this trip as well as the medical needs. Yes, it's been a doozy of a week, slugging down this heavy cocktail. But we'll get through it ... we always do. That's what grace -- and Grace -- is all about.