Monday, February 17, 2014

What a Day!


This post was started in December. It is about Sam's Gait Lab appointment at Gillette Children's Specialty Healtcare on December 16, 2013.



Sam had his Gait Lab appointment yesterday. It turned into quite a day.

One to Two inches of snow where forecasted for the day. I knew this, but it didn't start snowing until about 20 minutes before we were to leave. I think all two inches fell by the time we hit St Paul. After driving through that I was so glad to have valet parking available!

We made it to the Gait Lab just in time.

The first thing we noticed about the Gait Lab was that it is nice and toasty warm! Since they ask the kids to walk in shorts and no shoes they keep the temp up a bit. Right away Sam was asked to change into shorts and do some walking and running with his UCBs and barefoot for them that was videotaped. 

Then began the measuring. Not only weight and height, but every conceivable measurement on his lower body possible. It was very detailed. Marks were made to measure and those marks were referred back to later in the day. 


In fact the PT doing all this measuring noticed what looked like dried blisters on his feet from his UCBs. So a stop over to Assistive Technology was added to our day. 

Then the markers for the motion capture were glued and taped on. These markers are grey to look at but when a flash from a camera hits them they light up. 




It took a long time to put these all on in the exact spot they needed to be.

Then came the fun.



The magic stick he is holding was used to help point to specific spots on his legs.




The results of this day are contained in a 10 page report. There are three things we are going to act upon. The first is weakness in specific muscle sets in his lower extremities that we are going to address with physical therapy. Secondly, Sam has ankle valgus. This is a condition where the ankles roll in that leads to other problems in his legs compromising his stability. Since Sam is still growing, this can be corrected with guided growth. One side of the growth plate on the bottom of the tibia will be closed with a screw allowing the other side to grow and the angles to correct themselves. The last thing I want to follow up on is the fact that he has loose ligaments.I want to talk with the genetic doctor about this. 

So combine the gait lab information with previous x-ray information of  Sam's right tibia and we have two things to correct surgically. The ankle valgus as previously described and a telescoping rod placed in Sam's right tibia to keep the bone from bowing further and reduce the chance that the lesion will break or if it does, it will minimize the damage done by a fracture. This will be the 10th surgery for Sam and we finally have a date of March 4th.

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