club foot treatment

dd was born with a club foot. They don't know what causes club feet; there's a 1 in 800 chance of being born with one. What *I* can tell you is that when I was 8 or 9 wks pregnant with her I had food poisoning brought on by pesticides... I was canning 100 lbs of (non-organic, i.e. sprayed) cherries, and was eating them while I worked... and before I washed them. I got really sick and later I read that this is when the legs/feet develop in the fetus. So for me, there's an obvious connection, one which the medical world will not acknowledge because there's been no research done on that. nonetheless, dd was born with a club foot.

When she was an infant, she had weekly full leg casts, and then wore a dennis-brown splint full-time for 3 months and every night until she was 4 yrs old. At that time, it looked like the foot was corrected and no further treatment was required.

Sometime around 7, we began to notice her running gait was changing. She went through a growth spurt and then it was obvious the foot was relapsing. Back to the specialist. She spent 6 wks this summer in a half-leg cast.

But the foot is relapsing AGAIN. So now it's on to surgery. Basically a tendon transplant. You see, 1 in 800 kids will have a club foot. 3 out of 4 of those will respond to casting (the Ponsetti method) and avoid having surgery. Only 1 in 4 kids will need the surgery. I should buy the kid a lottery ticket, lol. So she'll have casting prior to the surgery, as well as after. There's a bit of a wait list, so we're now just waiting to get a date. And because it's the tendons, the healing time is long - like over a year to 18 mos before she regains full strength and mobility in that foot.

It'll all be fine, but wow, hey. Soooooo blessed to live in Canada with our fantastic medical system and also sooooooo blessed to have a world-renowned specialist in club foot at our local hospital. Absolutely fantastic.

In the meantime, she's hulahooping around the house and jumping on the trampoline, riding her bike, dancing ballet and jazz, hiking, generally you really wouldn't notice anything wrong with her foot at all. And here she comes, in a witch hat and cape, pretending to trick-or-treat, hoping I'll give her a candy. LOL