A Skew What?

Eddie had his appointment at the orthopaedic clinic at Children's Mercy Hospital on Thursday and I came away knowing less than when I went. Our journey began when Eddie started walking and we noticed something weird with his feet. I blogged about it HERE if you want to go back and read it. This is what they look like when he's standing:

At his 1 year check up our pediatrician, Dr. C, said he thought Eddie had metatarsus adductus. MA is when the bones in the front part of the foot turn in towards the body. Well, we went to CMH thinking that was what he had. When we met the nurse practitioner she and the intern-resident-student-person with her, examined Eddie's feet and legs. After about 10-15minutes of pulling, twisting, bending and flexing the nurse practitioner told us that Eddie did not, in fact, have MA like we thought. She suspected that he actually has something called skewfoot. She talked a little about how his tendon in his arch is tight as well as his achilles tendon, how his foot isn't as flexible as it should be which is what happens with skewfoot (I guess...). At that point I took him to get x-rays to see how his bones were growing. Pretty cool looking huh?

After reviewing the x-rays she told me that she was sure that at least his left foot is skewfoot, although his right may be MA. She also told me that we would need to see a surgeon, not because he needs surgery, but because he needed someone who specializes in things like this. If it had been MA she would have shown me some stretching and physical therapy to do, but she wasn't able to treat skewfoot. She also said something about Dr. J deciding what to do and if casting would be necessary. (WHAT?? Casting a walking toddler??) So I set up an appointment with Dr. J to have Eddie evaluated for skewfoot and we left.

 I have soooo many questions though. I felt like I didn't get any useful information other than, he has skewfoot and she couldn't treat it. So I called our awesome pediatrician and talked to his equally awesome nurse, Jennifer. I told her what we'd found out and asked if she could find out from Dr. C what skewfoot was, how it's different from MA and how it's treated. Dr. C called me later that evening (yes, he called me in the evening! That's how amazing he is!!) and basically said he didn't know what it was and couldn't find anything other than a couple brief references to it in their database. He apologized that he couldn't help me out. I threatened to find a new ped for the kiddos ;-), but that will never happen unless he leaves the practice for some reason...and he'd better not or I, along with my friend Danna and SIL Clara, will be forced to stalk him and move wherever he goes! ;-)

So here we are, more clueless than even before. I have managed to find a couple articles on skewfoot and MA but, unfortunately, they are research articles and are written in medical lingo so I don't understand them at all. :-( I did find one article that explained skewfoot in somewhat layman's terms but I still don't understand how what I read applies to Eddie. I guess I'll just have to wait the 2 1/2 weeks until his next appointment at CMH.

:::SIGH:::