Dolphins and therapy!

Some of you may remember way back when Jack agreed to have this surgery, there was a deal made. If he went through the surgery, we would take him to swim with dolphins. Well, obviously, Jack held up his end of the bargain, so a few weeks ago.....we did this:

We also spent a week in Disney world, which really truly is a magical place. We had so much fun, we rode alllllllll the rides, saw shows, parades, met characters. I think all 5 of us had the time of our life!

This is Jack, right before riding his first big rollercoaster.

Once we got home, we got back to work. We were approached with an idea from my brother-in-law (a PT) about a therapy he thought would work for Jack. Of course, we immediately agreed to try it, we trust Jamie's opinion 100% and Jack has sort of plateaued in his gait progression. The new therapy is an acornym called PENS, this stands for something important and medical, but I can't remember what :) I KNOW I am not totally accurate here, but the gist of it is this....we put these electrodes on Jack's muscles (quad and hamstring) and this machine uses some wavelength to contract the muscle in a triphasic pattern (quad, hamstring, quad, quad, hamstring, quad). This pattern is the normal muscle pattern when one walks. Because Jack has always limped and never walked in this pattern, we are introducing the concept to his nervous system. Initially, we are hoping to build strength in those muscles, and as time goes on hoping to retrain his nervous system and brain to walk in that triphasic pattern. Following the "zapping session" (as we refer to it) we do all these strength exercises with a weight on his left ankle. We do this 3 times a week.....we've been doing it for 2 weeks now and dare I say....we are cautiously optimistic that we are seeing progress already!!!!

Jack has been using this extra 30 minutes three times a week "zapping time" to kick back, relax, and read. I'm proud to say he is zipping through the Magic Treehouse Series very quickly. I'm thinking once summer is here we'll switch to a new series, I think he's hoping for something like Captain Underpants. :)

So, that's where we are for now. The one-year mark is approaching in May, hard to believe it's been a year! I joke that Jack is going to have stories when he's older that his wife and kids won't believe.....screws sticking out of his leg bones, his parents turning bolts to make his leg grow, his uncle hooking up to electrodes to zap him. It makes for a great story! :)