Dispatches from the sunburned wastelands

For those who don't know yet, little Martin was born with a condition called talipes, which means that his feet are permanently turned in (in more medieval times, this condition was referred to as clubfeet). It is the most common birth defect, and one in every thousand babies will have one, or both feet turned in. Nobody really knows what causes this condition. Talipes can usually be rectified by physiotherapy, which involves applying splints, braces, plaster casts, and it sometimes requires surgery. Later on, the child will usually be required to wear some sort of special shoes, to prevent the calf muscles from twisting back again. These days, children who are treated correctly from birth, will grow up to become active, running, jumping and sporty kids.

Sometimes, it can take months before this condition gets diagnosed, which may impair the treatment, but luckily in our case it was spotted right away. However, the physiotherapist at the hospital where Baby Martin was born did not immediately prescribe the correct treatment - which would have been the application of splints or plaster casts. Instead, she gave us a set of exercises to do, which meant that several times a day, we had to manipulate Martin's feet, resulting in pain for baby, and sever trauma for his parents. This would probably have continued for a while, but when our medical insurance refused to pay for his treatment by a physio in a public hospital, we had to try and find a private physio who was willing to treat him. This is a very specialized field - paediatric physiotherapy, and they are very scarce here in Canberra. We finally found someone, but after one look at Martin she referred us to the Canberra hospital, where his feet were immediately put in funky purple plaster casts. According to the lovely physio, this should have been done immediately after birth. Oh well....

The only problem now is that, because the casting has to be repeated every week for the next couple of months, we have to continue fighting the medical insurance company, whose call centre employees do not understand the nature of the treatment, and just hears 'public hospital' and 'physio', and immediate rejects our claims. The Canberra hospital has been very good to us, however, and promised to help us with the fight.

Before the casts:


And after:Are those plaster casts groovy or what?

Posted by HannesB at 6:14 PM Comments