Cath Lab Digest

Rarely in my profession do I encounter a patient whose story profoundly affects me. It happens more often when I see children. As a parent, I cannot possibly imagine any of my children in chronic pain.

This is why I was so disturbed when I met a young lady and heard her experience over the last six months or so. Her pediatrician sent her to me because she was in so much pain. She could not ambulate properly and would not put her heel down flat on the ground. Her pediatrician wanted me to evaluate her and see if this was a mechanical or sensory issue.

I am a voracious reader. I love books and immersing myself in the new worlds the best fiction writers create. I also love textbooks. Throughout college and podiatry school, I spent most of my money -- anything not reserved for living or education expenses -- on any text I could find. In between studying for exams, I would leaf through these texts to pick up bits of information I hoped would stick in my databank for future use.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog (see http://bit.ly/otq05C ), I recently visited family in Canada and, of course, served as a personal podiatric physician to my parents’ and in-laws’ relatives, friends and neighbors. As our family knows, my big interest lies in pediatric foot and ankle deformities. With this in mind, my mother-in-law asked me to meet with a next-door neighbor‘s child, whom she described as “interesting.” For once (wink wink), my mother-in-law was right.
 

My life has been kind of crazy lately. I left an area where I had been practicing for almost 10 years in order to move to a new area and a new practice that offered me the opportunity of a lifetime.

One of my first blogs, over a year ago, discussed treatment of a pediatric underlapping toe (see http://www.podiatrytoday.com/blogged/when-a-child-presents-with-an-under... ). Since then, I have operated on the patient’s contralateral toe and I thought it would be nice to provide a follow-up of how things went for this young patient.