Philly Trip

Today we went to Philadelphia to see a specialist for my wife's elbow. When she was 16 she had a skiing accident that eventually led to her having her radial head removed and a titanium piece put in to replace it. After 7 years of everyday living, the titanium piece wore away at the rest of the bone and she had to have it removed and replace with cadaver bone and cartilage. This deteriated three times as fast and it has since wore completely away. Since our son was born and gradually gotten heavier, my wife is having a very hard time picking him up and holding him. You could only imagine what it would feel like not to be able to pick up and hold your own child.

Today in Philly, we spoke to an expert at the University of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately there is no quick fix, but we have three options. The first is to use cortisone shots to dull the pain until our son is older and doesn't need to be picked up. At this time she would then be able to have a total replacement of her elbow, but be limited to only lift 5 lbs.

Option two would be to have the replacement now, but not be able to lift our son anymore. (So that's not really an option now is it?)

Option three is to have her elbow fused where she would not be able to bend her elbow at all ever again. Her pain however would be gone for good. She would be able to lift anything she wanted, but again, movement would be limited.

For now, we have some serious thinking and soul searching to do to figure out what we are going to do. She did have a cortisone shot today, hopefully it will work, but only time will tell.