Grampa and I took Em to PT today. Em keep up her elite status today by hanging out with her buddy Grace, the Inside Edition TV star! She somehow knows the right crowd to hang out in! Em was excited to see Grace and make some future dinner plans. She had a great session with Don who wrote a script for a shoe lift. So let me explain, as I may have already in the past but a refresher never hurt anyone... Pic below of Em putting her Super Brace to Don at PT!
Don wrote a script for a 4cm lift to put on to her left shoe (obviously as that's the only one she's wearing). This will put her back to being taller on her left side, almost as much as when we started lengthening her right leg. Why? The purpose is to keep the right leg shorter so Em is always extending it when she walks. This helps from the physical therapy side keeping it stretched out as much as possible. There is also the weight of the fixator pulling her leg down assisting with that stretch. It is heavy- just ask Mom as she was in the pool with her and Em wanted to swim without a vest on. Mom told her she would sink to the bottom without a vest and Em said let's try- so they did and she did- sink to the bottom. Don't get me wrong as I believe that Em will figure out a way to swim with this thing on her leg, without a vest, if we keep telling her she can't.
Anyway, let me give you a recap. We are doing a 5cm lengthening on Em's right leg, which was her total discrepancy when we started and will make her even when we are done with this phase. We will have lengthened her right leg a total of 2cm at our appt this week. We are adding a 4cm lift to her LEFT sneaker which is actually the difference from her foot to the bottom of her walking plate- this leaving us with a 3cm difference in which we have left to lengthen. Confused? Let's try this:
Left leg longer to start by 5cm + 4cm lift = 9cm
Right leg with the fixator has a gap from her foot to her walking plate of 4cm + 2cm of lengthening already completed= 6cm
9cm - 6cm = 3cm shorter on her right side.
This 3cm is what we have left to lengthen which will take place over the next 6 weeks (1cm every two weeks). We dropped off her shoe at the cobbler (always thought that was such a funny word) and hope to pick it up tomorrow. Em's excited for her new shoe like Grace's!
Special Delivery- Thank you Todd, Caroline, Jane and Rose for the box of goods! The girls were fighting over the candy this morning and I'm still pulling Easter grass out of my nose from trying to break up the fight!
No comments:
Post a Comment