Since we’re in our last week of rehab here at the inpatient clinic, I’ve been going back and observing more of the PT and OT sessions and taking pages of notes for the types of things we need to be working on at home.
Some things of note: Annie needs to be in her braces every single moment that she is standing or walking. We will be putting on her braces as soon as she gets out of bed and keeping them on all day. She needs to walk with her reverse walker pretty much at all times for the next 6 months, so we’ll be hauling it up and down the stairs and taking it to school and church and everything. The braces prevent her from walking incorrectly, and we need to keep them on so that her new neural pathways are set. The walker helps with stability so that she can focus on proper mechanics like heel-first stepping and lifting her feet. Again, we’ve got to lock these new, healthy gait patterns into her brain. We shouldn’t rush her, so if we’re in a hurry, better to pick her up and carry her than to have her rush and do something incorrectly. Time to get that handicap tag, I think.
