Life with Willow has its hazards. She is a mess. Literally. So, that being said, lets go back to the beginning (lets' go back to the very beginning...a very good place to start. Sorry. ADD. It happens sometimes. All the time...anyway). Several weeks ago Willow took the bulb out of her ceiling fan (that's another blog). We don't know the specifics but the end result was she shattered the bulb on the wood floor in her bedroom. We walked in the room and she was sitting on her bed covered in blood. I think she was as confused as we were. We finally saw the glass and realized that she must have cut her foot. This is where it gets complicated. The cut looked really clean and there wasn't anymore glass that was visible. So we put steri-strips on it and began the daunting task of keeping her out of it. Good luck. After the first week we noticed she still wasn't putting weight on it. She also started telling us "fix it." Looking back on it, there were other signs too: outbursts, crying, and aggression. Willow has a very sweet disposition and that is the one thing her Autism has not affected. We were stumped. This is a common problem in the Autism community but never with Willow. By the second week,
no progress AND the foot started bleeding again. So I took her to the ER and we finally figured out what was wrong. We had missed 4-5 more pieces of glass in her foot. She had been walking around like that for two weeks and couldn't tell us! I wanted to crawl out of the ER. There was no way to remove it but surgically:( We had our pre-op the next day and surgery on Wednesday. I was there at 5:30am and I was joined by my fiercely loyal mother and a devoted OT of Willows. I couldn't have had better company. Her surgery was at St. Francis South and they were AMAZING. Willow did well going into the surgery but had a very difficult time in recovery. They got us out of the hospital ASAP and we were able to get her home and comfortable. There were two complicating factors; she threw up every time we gave her pain medicine and she wouldn't leave the surgical site alone. By two o'clock I had three red barf stains on my carpet and Willow had ripped out her stitches. We went to her Dr's office in the am and they put steri-strips on the incision and CASTED HER FOOT! She hates it but it is the biggest relief for us. It limits her mobility and she can't rip her stitches out again. Anyway, I have to go...I think I hear her cast thumping on her wood floor!
