The Return To St Louis

Over the last few years we’ve been able to go away for a few days at Easter. We’ve headed down with family to the seaside town, Mumbles, in South Wales. The beaches around the coastline there are fantastic.

Returning to the same place has often shown how Rhys has changed over the previous year. He used to use a toy buggy as a walking aid which he’d take on to the sand. On the next visit he was no longer using it.

As much as it’s exciting to go to new places, returning to somewhere familiar is somehow reassuring and I always look forward to going down there.

Rhys and I are back in St Louis and in the same way it feels familiar and reassuring to be here. We’ll be back in The Children’s Hospital on Tuesday so that he can have his heel cords lengthened. They use a less invasive technique here and he should be back to weight bearing through his feet (with painkillers) the day after the surgery.

We’d hoped it could be avoided but watching him walk, crouch & scooter over the last few weeks has confirmed that though his legs are no longer stiff, he just doesn’t have the range of movement in his ankle joints to allow him to move & walk in a natural way. It’s the result of having walked in a ‘tip toe’ pattern for several years.

Looking back at the calendar for this year I’ve realised this will be his third round of surgery in just 7 months. From his cochlear implant on the 2nd March…

…to his SDR in June…

…to tomorrows surgery on his heel cords.

We head to the hospital at 10:30 in the morning (4:30pm UK time) hoping, once again, for a good outcome and a speedy recovery. And then who knows how able he’ll be next time we’re down on the beach in Mumbles.