BPMomBPSons's Journal

My nephew, Jackson is eight years old. He was born with a defect in his hip wherein the tibia, which normally is a round ball at the top of the bone, and fits into the hip socket, his did not form with a round ball. Therefore, he was casted at two in order to help the calcium build and form that necessary ball to fit into the hip socket.

That did not take as well as hoped and this summer he had surgery to graft bones to the tibia forming the ball manually. There were three pins attached to help the bones grow together.

Normally, a child goes home and gains weight due to inactivity. Jackson lost weight because he did not eat, was not hungry. He also has ADHD, and the patch he wears to control that cuases his appetite to be surpressed.

One of the pins worked it's way out, under has cast, causing an infection. Sugery to remove the pin was performed. Then anthoer pin was just under the very thin skin. More surgery. The inscision was on top of the not quite healed skin. Long story short, he now has an infection caused by the pins working their way out, which caused a staff infection, which lead to a bone infection.

He is on his fourth course of intravenous anitbiotics to cure the infections. They didn't discover the staff infection and bone infection until two weeks after the third sugery, then prescribed antibiotics that did not address the staff infection. He is now on a broader antibiotic in order to wipe out all the infections.

The worry over losing him has been great.