I love Childrens Hospital

The staff at children's hospital is amazing. Skyla has loved everyone she has had to meet so far and they have all made her feel as comfortable as possible.

Yesterday Skyla had her first Physical therapy appointment. We met her cool Physical therapist Shelly, and Shelly was so fun skyla loved everything she did. This was more of a evaluation of what Sky is capable of doing, I guess there has been some dispute going on between the ortho Doc and Tony the guy who made the cast for Sky's leg braces. Shelly was telling me that Dr. Skinner (the ortho doc) wants to attack Sky really aggressively but what he wants her to do Tony (the cast guy) doesn't think she can physical do it, and it would do nothing but put her in pain if we took it so aggressively. Shelly was basically the tie breaker in this argument and agreed with Tony. Her is what is going on......

Skyla has no dorsiflextion in her right leg. This means she cant bring her toes toward her body any further then a 90' (and that's with help and force from Shelly) most people can stand with their legs straight, feet flat on the ground and bend their knees with out lifting their heals off the ground (to a point). Skyla cant do this she has to lift her heals up to bend her knees. Also since she she has walked on her toes for so long her center of gravity is WAY off. Shelly explained it like this. Try standing still on just your heals (lift your toes off the ground) you can do it but after a few seconds you have to start moving to stay up because you feel like your falling backwards, your muscles start to tier and all you want to do is put your feet flat because this doesn't feel normal and its a lot of work. That is how Skyla feels when we ask her to walk flat. Her center of gravity is so far off she feel as if she is going to fall, not to mention the muscles she has to use to walk flat are underdeveloped because she has never used them like she was supposed to.

The run down now is we have to re-train Skylas mind and body all at the same time. We have to teach her mind to know what is the right center of gravity and what is normal and to just break the habit. We also have to train her muscles, she has to start using the right muscles and start developing them so she can walk on flat feet. Luckily we have Shelly and she wants to take it slow and easy so her body will adjust smoothly and with little to no pain. She still has not gotten her braces it might me another month till she does, but when she does they are going to put lifts in them so she wont be completely flat right from the start. Each week at one of her physical therapy appointments they will shave a bit of the lift off and slowly bring her down to where she should be.

Its going to be a slow process but as long as we stick to it she will be out of them and walking normal in about 6 months (keep your fingers crossed for us). GOOD NEWS Shelly said she doesn't think Sky has any short heal cords and that she more then likely wont need surgery, she wasn't making any promises but said it looked pretty good we just have to wait and see as time goes by.