Megan got her brace today!! We got it fitted this morning during PT. As you'll see below, we worked on walking with the brace on. You wouldn't believe the difference the brace makes. I mentioned last week that they skipped a step with Megan's brace. Usually the back is completely fixed, but they moved right to the hinge brace. This is a good sign, it shows that she has progressed enough to not need the fixed brace.
This is a side view of the brace. It is open in the front. You can see the hinges on the ankle. If she was a step behind there would be no opening. This will hopefully help her with ankle movement as she continues to walk. It forces her to walk heal, toe rather than just flat footed.
Too bad the Bruins weren't able to pull out a win last night, but we are still believers in Boston! This is the back of the brace. Again, you can see the hinge near the ankle that allows for movement.
This is Mom getting trained to walk with Megan. She was at home on break when I was trained with my dad last week. I have to say, it is a lot easier to walk with her now that she has the brace because before she was more at risk for rolling her ankle. Not to mention she has more strength as the days goes on, so she is gaining more control over her body. It was pretty scary sometimes walking with her without the bract. She wouldn't feel that her ankle was rolling, and therefore could have sprained it. She was fine, and hopefully the brace will get her ankle moving again soon.
Here we are working on stairs!! I was amazed when her PT took us into the stairwell because just a couple days ago we were working on a model staircase that had a step that was only a few inches. This was an incredible change. As you can see, Megan is reaching over to the railing with her left hand because we only have a railing on the left side at home when she will walk up the stairs. They want to make her training as realistic as they can for the situation she will be going home to. Her PT trained my mom first and then me. I got to work with her after she had walked up and down about 3 times, so she was tired. I have to say I got my bicep workout in because I was holding her so tight.
I just want to clarify for some of you who may be curious, Megan still cannot walk on her own. The therapists are giving her support less and less. When they walk with her, it has gone from two hands firmly on the waist, to maybe a hand on the shoulder and close to the waist, but not touching. She is gaining more balance, so hopefully she'll be able to walk without someone holding her soon. When we walk with her, however, we have to hold her tightly around the waist just because we are not used to her movements and we don't want any accidents.
This is Megan's team! Her Dr. is in the white coat. From left to right, her PT, OT, Speech, and then her case worker. We had sort of a farewell meeting today. Each therapist went through and kind of told us their thoughts on her progress and what we can do with Megan at home. It was very informative and kind of sad because we will not be working with these therapists anymore. There are therapists that Megan will start seeing next week for out-patient therapy.
Overall everything is continuing to improve on a daily basis, her speech more noticeably than anything else. She is now able to get a couple sentences out at a time. It is very surprising, but truly amazing to hear her work through her thoughts and finally get out what she wants to say.
Tomorrow is Megan's last day of inpatient therapy, and then she is headed home Thursday morning! She couldn't be more excited! The nerves are setting in, this is a whole new chapter in this experience. Now we will be on our own for a lot longer than we have been so far. It will be quite an adjustment. We will see what next week brings!
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