Over the past few years, Jaylee has fought off shin splints. This spring, between lacrosse and rugby training, she was in tears on two spectate occasions. Jaylee does not cry. She asked to see a Dr. The pediatrician NP saw her 2 days later and was suspicious of compartment syndrome so she sent us to Ortho. I only knew about Acute compartment syndrome, from my ER days, so I was very nervous. We saw Ortho a week later and he agreed with the NP. We chose to start conservatively with no running or exertion and PT twice a week for a month. At PT they focused on stretching because she, apparently, is SUPER tight, everywhere. Taking a break helped her to get rid of most of her pain at rest. After a month, Ortho cleared her to run at 50% and to keep up with PT. She was immediately in pain when starting to run on a fancy treadmill at 50% of her weight. So, we got sent the next week to Dr Carroll, an Ortho that deals with Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome. He believes that she does have it but wants to make sure that she doesn’t have other things going on too. So, in the past week, she’s had a fancy ultrasound test to check the blood flow to her feet, an MRI to make sure that there are not tiny fractures or muscle herniation through the fascia, and an EMG of her lower legs and lower back, to check her nerves and muscle electrophysiology. Luckily, she had good results on all of those tests and we see Dr Carroll on Monday to discuss surgery and to do the defintive pressure testing that must be done before surgery. She’s happy that with all of the tests, it pushes surgery back until after the Sr Prom, and she can wear shoes, not post op boots.
She also had blood work done over the week that was essentially normal... except for high cholesterol and very high triglycerides!?! So, next month she’ll see a GI Dr and a Cardiologist at CHOP. This should not affect her having surgery though. She’s been keeping us busy!!
Compartment pressure testing will be done on May 14th...
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It’s May 14th and Jaylee is in the middle of her test. I watched them inject her 8 times with lidocaine and watch 3 of the 8 at-rest pressure tests done. All three were elevated. Her nerves were jumping. She didn’t cry- because Jaylee doesn’t cry- but kept scratching “Oh yeah!” “OK!” “That’s OK!” “Oh boy!” I tried to console her in some way but was sternly told yo leave her alone. Why do they get so big? How I wish I could just scoop her up and fix things with a kiss. Jason is back there now, this is the first appointment he’s come to, so I know he has lots of questions for the Dr. I’ll update soon...
Each leg has 4 compartments, at rest, 5 of her compartments read high. So she ran for 5 minutes and then they rechecked four pressures, all 4 read high. So... it’s official:(
The test was Barrberic. The pressure needles looked more like miniature screw drivers - HUGE!
The Ortho Dr wants us to talk to the Cardiologist next week then follow up with him to come up with our plan.
Tonight, Jaylee is icing her sore legs and broke down once because the pain was so bad. Advil did the trick. Hopefully she can get around for school tomorrow. Her legs feel like there’s still needles in her legs. Jason knows how to console her, since she doesn’t like the way I attempt to.
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