Kadence's MRI

I just called Shriners to get the results of Kadence's MRI, and there's some good and bad news. According to the radiologist Kadence has scoliosis. Ha Ha! We already knew that, but he had to note it. She does still have fluid on her spinal cord. I thought it was just in front of her vertebrae, but I guess it was on her spinal cord. She doesn't show any signs of tethering of her cord which is great and she doesn't have split cord. So I guess we got what we wanted. Of course we didn't want anything to be wrong, but we wanted the fluid over the split cord. So all in all we are pleased because she doesn't have both. Of course it starts my mind racing because I have no idea what the treatment plan is for the fluid, if it causes any complications, or if we just plain ol' leave it alone. We don't even see the Dr for a few months to talk about it. Her care coordinator is going to send the MRI results and images over to her Dr to have him review them. If there are any differences in the reviews she will call us back.


While on the phone I also set up Kadence's next casting. It will be on November 11th which means she has another Halloween out of cast!! I explained to the care coordinator that we no longer want Kadence in casts between May and August because she just gets way too overheated. David and I put a lot of thought into what was best for Kadence and felt that it was best. She gets so hot that we can't even go outside until after 7 on most days and this was the most mild beginning to summer we've had in a long time. Plus, Kadence gets a lot of correction out of her first casting and then just stays the same so we figure why put her through the misery. She even had to come out of an air conditioned dance room because she got too overheated. She usually goes backwards while in a brace, but quickly regains ground in her first casting....and then stays there. We don't think we'll get her curve any better than mid 40's realistically, but when she is a woman and fills out you won't hardly be able to notice. We just need to try to keep her down around the 40's so that she is at a safe-ish degree when we fuse rods when she is 13 or 14.

Also, a little update on Kadence's current brace. She ended up getting pressure sores from her brace which means she has to go back in to see if she needs to get remolded for a new brace or if they can just alter her current brace. Most kids keep their brace off completely while letting the pressure sores heal, but Kadence slumps over so quickly that we had to put it on for 4 hours a day. We ended up putting it on while she slept at night so that she would get about 10 hours a day. It's all healed now and she is getting a new sore in a different spot that we are watching. Until it is an open sore we put her brace on the same as usual. We have an appointment to go get it all figured out on August 18th.

That's the update, I'll keep everyone posted on any changes.