Removal of Precice Nail

Surgery #9: Mary had the Precice Nail removed approximately 17 months after it was put in (June 2019). Overall Mary said it was the best she felt after any procedure!

1st Surgery, age 9

9th Surgery, age 17

Unfortunately, it was just Mary and me because of COVID, usually her father and I are both there. She also has a new doctor. So although it was surgery #9 and would have been very routine there were some big differences for us personally. 

No Dr. Scott smiley face to mark the leg and due to a rash from the last surgery we requested they not use glue so that is written on her leg.

Pre-op

Saying goodbye before she walked back for surgery. 

We saw the medical device rep who was there when they inserted the Precice Nail and who would be in the operating room with her again. It was nice to see a familiar face with all of the changes.

I got to wait in the cafeteria where we normally wait, I wasn't sure it would be open with Covid.  I said goodbye at 7:45am and she went to the Recovery room at 10. I was called back at 10:20. 

Luckily they were able to get all of the hardware out! They did have to dig a lot so the doctor thought she would be pretty soar. 

Mary woke up quicker than they expected her to and she was shaking a lot so they wrapped her in a lot of warm blankets. 

An hour later she was feeling good. So she got her IV out, dressed and we headed to the car at 11:35.

At home she was comfortable with Tylenol and Advil. She took Tylenol, then 3 hours later took Advil. She did that for 3 days, then took Tylenol only. 

At home, Day 1

4 days after surgery she went down to one crutch and when moving within a room, didn't use a crutch at all. 

She didn't take any pain medicine and starting using crutches only when outside the house starting Day 6.

Couple of issues that came up: 

A day after surgery a weird bubble appeared under her dressings, near the wound so we went to the doctor and they re-dressed the lower wound. 

Two days after surgery, she developed another itchy rash on her leg again, like last summer. Last summer it developed 2 weeks after surgery. We saw an allergist after 3 days and she advised it probably wasn't related to the glue or anything else because the reaction was too late: 2 weeks in 2019 and 2 days in 2020. I believe in Mary's theory, her left leg has had enough and it reacts in a itchy rash. Luckily, this time it was controlled by Benadryl prior to seeing the allergist. The the allergist advised to use Zyrtec and Benadryl as needed and the Zyrtec knocked down the rash so she didn't need Benadryl after 3 day of being on Zrytec and stopped using Zyrtec after a week.

 

10 days after surgery she started using a stationary bike.

So in summary, pretty easy procedure!