My Ordinary Life: My Wonderboy

Today marks my son's graduation from middle school. We've shopped together for a pair of dress shoes last week and Kiet purchased his own camera online in anticipation of the occasion. We're ready to go, or so I thought. With four children still at home, my kids' milestones are celebrated with less and less fanfare every year that goes by, as our shared experiences have prepared us for a repeat performance of just about any school event. Kiet also happens to be a very non-demanding child, so everything that involves him carries a tag that says "No big deal!" Nevertheless, I was looking forward to taking photos of my boy in his first nice suit.

As customary, the kids had dinner with their dad on the weekend, and after they returned home last night, I saw Kiet in the downstairs bathroom tending to himself with a bloody scratch running almost the entire length of his face. As it turned out, he'd fought with his younger sister in the car on the way home and it was more than just simple push and shove. These two got into each other's face constantly, and Lauren would fight back twice as hard if provoked. Kiet knew he would have to show up at his graduation ceremony with a very visible scar and asked me if I could get a good concealer for him. Just when you thought the last of your children was almost trouble-free and you'd soon reach the point where you could stop watching over them like a hawk, invariably something would happen to remind you there's still a lot of kid left in them, and maybe it wasn't time to relax yet!

Kiet playing paramedic to a seasick Lauren in happier times

A tender moment (rare with these two)

Picture perfect... but not really!

Kiet was born unusually hefty for a Vietnamese child (8 lbs 3 oz), with a shock of black hair forming a halo around his head that made him look like a cross between Max and one of his forest creatures in Maurice Sendak's classic picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. We used to joke that in his less winsome moments, Kiet could pass for a baby Don King.

Where the Wild Things Are stock images

I vaguely remembered my delivering doctor and nurses huddling at the end of my hospital bed conferring in hush tones, but the significance of their collective heads-up that a pediatrician would soon come by to discuss my child's "condition" somehow escaped me with all the commotion and brain drain that accompanied a difficult labor. It wasn't until I had a chance to speak directly with Kiet's pediatrician in his office during a follow-up visit that it dawned on me my child might need much more medical intervention than I'd expected.

We were soon referred to a pediatric orthopedist. Dr. Weinert confirmed in our first consultation with him that Kiet had a congenital deformity involving his left foot. The condition is called "club foot", and it made his foot turn inward and to the side, where it might appear that the top of the foot is where the bottom should be. If left untreated, a permanent and severe functional disability would result by the time Kiet became a teenager.

I learned that my boy might end up needing corrective surgery. "For now," the doctor said, "we'd try the Ponseti Method. It involves manipulation of the foot by stretching the tendons and repeatedly applying casts in order to gradually move the deformed foot into the correct position." If that did the job, it would be followed by Kiet's wearing a foot abduction brace to maintain the correction, and orthopedic shoes when he started walking.

It sounded pretty hopeful. I asked him how long he thought casting might be needed. Dr. Weinert said we would probably be able to tell in three months or so.

Three months turned into six months... nine months... then a year. By that time, I was told we'd need to prepare Kiet for surgery.

During the first year of his life, due to the disproportionate weight of the cast on his left calf as compared to his body weight, Kiet was pretty much immobilized on that side from the waist down. He never learned to crawl freely like other babies, and even rolling over or onto his side took a huge effort. The little guy pretty much lay on his back all the times unless I was holding him or sitting him up in a high chair. A patch of baldness formed on the back of his head, even though he had a healthy lion's mane otherwise. As an infant, his activities consisted of half-sitting, half-reclining in his baby sling chair, watching the world go by.

I remembered the first time we went to Dr. Weinert's office to remove Kiet's original cast. We had to do serial casting every week in the beginning, and every few weeks thereafter. Putting on the cast was only time-consuming, but cutting it off was a real trauma. It freaked Kiet out, and me even more! He wailed miserably during the procedure, and I cried along with him the whole time. The doctor and his assistant probably never saw a more cowardly mom. They patiently explained there was no way Kiet could be hurt by the cast's removal, but it was difficult for me to believe seeing how his tiny newborn limb had to hold up to the scary contraption they used to cut away the cast. The noise of the machine's whirling blade, the plaster dust, and our collective crying made it a very stressful event. It took me some time to get over seeing Kiet's calf looking pasty and shriveled inside the gauze that provided lining for the cast.

Once we got used to the frequency of Kiet's doctor's visits, the serial casting became less of an ordeal, but with three young children in the family, tending to the numerous appointments and chores that surrounded Kiet's medical condition made me a very frazzled mom. If he peed on his cast (which was often) and wet it, we would have to replace the cast earlier than scheduled. It was next to impossible to give Kiet his daily baths and not get his cast wet, as its dead weight would readily plop down into the bath water as I washed the rest of his body. I finally figured out a way to protect the cast, which was to encase it in a fluffy face towel to absorb any errant moisture with big rubber bands around it to hold the towel in place, then waterproof the whole thing with a silicone surgical glove that stretched tightly over the towel. This worked perfectly until Kiet's calf outgrew the size of the stretched glove.

I was anxious for the Ponseti Method to work, since we had invested a whole year's worth of expectations in this treatment, and very disappointed it didn't. Kiet's operation became the first in our family. We were told that this type of surgery was a nearly "bloodless" procedure, and Kiet wouldn't need any transfusions. It involved moving the tendon from the first ray (toe) to the third ray in order to release the inward traction on his foot.

We were instructed to check into CHOC (Children's Hospital of Orange County) in the early morning the day of surgery. I remember Dr. Weinert's scheduler telling me the younger the pediatric patient, the earlier their time slot given to them, as patients are supposed to fast before surgery and babies can't tolerate fasting as well as older children. I made sure to give Kiet a healthy feeding at midnight the night before, and nothing after he woke up. Kiet hadn't given up bottle feeding at the time, and while waiting for Dr. Weinert, he got terribly hungry and cranky. He wanted his baby bottle so bad, and I felt powerless to give him anything by mouth, not even water! I tried my best to comfort him by holding and rocking him on my feet until he was taken away.

I wandered the hospital hallway crying the whole time Kiet was in surgery. We were in the pediatric ward, with serious cases all around, and some people must have thought I had a child with an incurable or life-threatening illness. I felt guilty and ridiculous after seeing a young cancer patient chatting calmly with his parents with what looked like an IV dripping chemo into his veins, and retreated to the visitors' lounge where everyone was waiting for their loved ones to come out of surgery.

The wait seemed endless, but it must not have been more than two hours before I was updated by Dr. Weinert on Kiet's condition. He was already taken out of the operating room into what they called "the wake-up room", where I was allowed a visit. Kiet looked terrified and forlorn in the hospital's cold metal crib. His face was swollen with the IV fluid that was retained in his body and his lips were chapped and bloody after intubation. He opened his eyes, saw me, and immediately bawled. I wanted to lift him out of the crib immediately and hold him, but was afraid I would hurt him.

Kiet was released from the hospital the next day with pain medications. The first night at home, he went into colic mode for a straight 12 hours. He was hoarse from crying, and my mom and I took turns standing on our feet rocking him until our backs gave out and our arms went numb. Kiet's wails were so anguished, they made me wonder if the trauma of surgery was something that would stay permanently etched in his memory and affect him when he grew up.

I thought that recovering from surgery was the final stepping stone on Kiet's road to health, but was disappointed to find out his leg would need to remain in a cast for a while longer until his doctor was satisfied that surgery had proved to be successful. The day we removed Kiet's final cast was both a joyous celebration and a huge relief. I felt like a dead weight had been lifted from both of us!

Although Kiet's calf muscles had atrophied being under a cast for so long which made his left leg look markedly thinner and fragile-looking compared to the right, he did not need to wear a foot brace or orthopedic shoes, nor did he require any follow-up physical therapy. His long treatment was finally over!

Kiet grew up a healthy boy. But the memory of his childhood disability was something that changed my motherhood forever. Having a child with a medical condition made me a more compassionate person and a more caring mom. I realized what a miracle and a blessing it was to have a "normal" child, and never took that understanding for granted again.

Kiet's favorite children's book, which he liked me to read aloud to him over and over, was Robert Munsch's Love You Forever, in which the following passage was found:

A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang:

I'll love you forever,

I'll like you for always,

As long as I'm living

my baby you'll be.

The baby grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was two years old, and he ran all around the house. He pulled all the books off the shelves. He pulled all the food out of the refrigerator and he took his mother's watch and flushed it down the toilet. Sometimes his mother would say, "This kid is driving me CRAZY!"

But at night time, when that two-year-old was quiet, she opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor, looked up over the side of his bed; and if he was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. While she rocked him she sang:

I'll love you forever,

I'll like you for always,

As long as I'm living

my baby you'll be.