Gemma's Feet

This post has been a long time coming. This will be a lengthy post.

Gemma saw a new orthopedic doctor shortly after we got to Virginia. At this point she was still in boots and bar that the German doctor had her wear after casting. First we saw the physicians assistant and she said that her feet were really flexible and looked great. I showed her pictures of her feet before and throughout the casting process. She doubted that we needed to even wear the boots and bar during the day anymore maybe just at night.

Then she brought the doctor in and he was even further impressed with her flexibility even to the point of doubting that she ever had true clubfoot. He thinks she might have just had a positional thing from running out of room in the womb. He said he knew it was almost heretical (is that a word?) in the clubfoot community to not wear the boot and bar but that he really thought we should just leave them off for a month and see what happened. Since he never got to see Gemma before she went through casting, he couldn't tell for sure what her feet were like but he also knew that the clubfoot treatment is very long (like 4 or 5 years of nighttime wear) and it was either continue with treatment as is for that long or see what happens. I left it up to him to decide. Since when she was born two pediatricians said it wasn't clubfoot, I had always been skeptical.

SO we decided to leave the boots off and come back in about five weeks to see.

Today was the day!

The P.A. said her feet look great! If it had been clubfoot they would have almost immediately started turning inwards and she would have lost a lot of flexibility. She is still very flexible and her feet haven't turned in. Such good news! She said we don't even need to go back to follow up, we have their information in case we ever have anything come up but they are confident that it was just a positional issue that was corrected faster with casting but that she probably didn't even need casting to correct it. But obviously the casting didn't hurt her at all since the German doctor did a good job.

So that's that! Our prayers were answered and Gemma's feet are perfect!