Blog #3: And Then He Walked

Today I thought I would share with you the aftermath of Dylan's accident, as well as a few photos.

While in the hospital, Dylan had multiple surgeries. In the beginning, on a daily basis, he went into surgery to have his leg washed out to prevent infection. After they were confident that he was infection free, they were ready to begin reconstruction of his little leg. Dylan had lost most of his lower right leg. His heel was gone, the achilles tendon, and his entire calf muscle was gone as well. Working together with orthopedic and plastic surgeons, they came up with Dylan's plan.

To reconstruct his leg, they would take his latissimus muscle from his left side, and graft it to his calf. Little could be done about the part of the heel bone and tendon loss. To cover all of this area, they would have to do a skin graft taken from his left thigh. We then would hope and pray that all the tissue grafted and remained healthy.

Surgery day was a big day, however, at this point we had lived in a state of...

I stop here because there are no words. The feelings and emotions- the fear I had for my son, his life, and his future handicaps, are not able to be put into words. Nothing can explain the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, the feeling of numbness, or the guilt. The guilt that for some reason you have failed to protect the one person in this world that is your entire life. The one person that you knew you would never let anything happen to. That guilt still lives with me today, and I know it will always be there. I assume that any parent of a child that was in a horrific accident feels this way, although I have never spoken of these feeling to another parent in a similar situation, so I cant be sure.

So surgery day was big. Not to mention, my son with his one injured leg, would come out of surgery with three wounds. His right leg that they were reconstructing, his left leg from where they would take the skin graft, and an incision under his left arm pit extending down his side from taking the muscle for the flap. Dylan was already in so much pain, and it would be three times that when he came out of surgery, and back into the ICU.

However, surgery went well. Dylan did great. Multiple times a day the grafts were looked at to make sure they were taking; to make sure the tissue looked healthy. And they did wonderfully.

Eventually, he continued to heal more each day, he had less pain each day, and he was moved to the step down unit. From there, we still had a long way to go, He was discharged home with an external fixator on his foot. We spent many weeks pushing my once very active toddler in his stroller.

Many weeks after that,

and the fixator came off, the grafts were healed, and we had a special brace for his leg. This would fit in his shoe and get my little boy back on his feet.

Do you remember the anticipation of your child's first steps? Do you remember the joy and excitement that poured out of you to seem them take those wobbly little steps? I do too, but i have never wanted to see my child walk as badly as I wanted to see my 2 year old son walk again.

Do you know what? HE DID. He took those first steps on the driveway at my parents house. That is joy. To see your child overcome an obstacle. To see the fight in them, the confidence, the resilience, and to see the joy on their face as well. That is happy. That is ugly cry happy.

Dylan's story is far from over. This is only the beginning. As he grew, he needed surgery after surgery. Those stories are for another day. I will share some pictures of Dylan at the end of this blog. Forgive the quality. 16 years the phones were not as fancy...ha!

Kiss your babies!