The Good - The Bad IS The Ugly

Well... Things with the shoes have been going well. The tops of her feet are staying soft, and slowly getting a little shorter/flatter. Real slowly, but we'll take what we can get.

That was the good.

The ugly bad is that at least some of the fluid is moving back into the toes, especially in her right foot, and we've lost all the ground we gained with them. Poor little piggies are all full up again and look SO tight and painful it made me want to cry for her. She's also getting heat rash on her toes, under the kinesio-tape, so we just taped the tops of her feet Friday morning and lotioned up the toes real good.

It looks as though therapy may be a little ~too~ intense in this unseasonable late September 100 degree heat we've been having. We've been pretty darn aggressive since I really WANT to get her feel to a "normal/maintenance" state this time. Maybe too aggressive. Her skin is starting to seem fragile; thinnish, easily marked by pressure of the bandages, and HOURS after unwrapping if she experiences any kind of temperature change (in today's case, playing on the slip 'n slide with her cousin) the areas where she was bandaged pop up raised and red again, as though the bandages had just been removed.

We did an UBER light wrap Friday, elastomoll 'round the toes, wide 3in elastomoll up the legs with a small foam pad on either side of the ankle and coban/vetrap for compression, no artiflex or compression bandages in hopes of reducing the heat/bulk problem. The heat rash looked better today when I unwrapped her to play in the water, but I'm worried.

Her skin has always been ~so~ good. Tough hide, NEVER had an infection despite having gotten cuts/scrapes/bug bites on the affected areas. If what we are doing is breaking down the skin should be stop, give it a chance to heal, then resume? We've made it to four infection-free and I want to stay that way as long as possible. Once she gets her first round of cellulitis things will never be the same. Her susceptibility to it will increase dramatically and this will become more than an inconvenient condition, it will become a potentially dangerous one.

So... She's unwrapped, asleep after several hard days of play with her Rita-refugee cousins, and I'm gonna take a hard look at her skin in the morning. Gonna have to do some hard thinking about continuing therapy right now...