Just call me Veruca

"All human wisdom is summed up in two words -- wait and hope"
-- Alexandre Dumas Père

This morning I took WB on a visit to her orthopaedist, to see if the brace she has been wearing since early last summer has been doing its job. As you all know, it has been a rough summer for WB, health-wise, and for no real reason I was feeling pessimistic as we drove in for today's appointment.

We had a lot scheduled, and based upon past experience I was afraid it was all going to take forever, but to my happy surprise everything went much faster than I had anticipated. We started out on the second floor, where we participated in a research study on hip dysplasia (and learned that the child has remarkably flexible joints), then headed down to the first floor for x-rays, and then back to the second floor to meet her doctor. (Lesson learned for today: when accompanying a just-barely toddling child to any kind of an appointment, don't bother to bring your knitting. You will not be sitting still.)

The verdict: there has been some slight improvement, but the angle of her acetablum is still clearly too shallow, and our doctor pointed out what I had failed to realize at our last visit: at the time her hip was subluxated (I may not be using that word correctly, but am too tired to look it up). I don't know how I missed this very important piece of information when I was shown the x-rays at our June appointment, but I did.

Today's x-ray showed that the hip is now closer to being seated properly, but close only counts in horseshoes (if I may quote my father, who in turn was paraphrasing Frank Robinson). The acetabulum is still too shallow. We're to stay the course with her brace for as long as we see even slight improvement from one appointment to the next, and she will have another x-ray and follow up in December.

It has now been almost a year since WB's diagnosis, and I am struck by how certain I was that we would be done by now, that of course my child would be in the majority for whom the Pavlik harness works wonders. That she was not -- and that we are facing months, if not years of appointments and possible surgery -- has me feeling shell-shocked. Again.

In the long run I know she'll be o.k., but I am not by nature a particularly patient person, and oh! my friends ... what a growing experience this is proving to be.