Saturday, April 19, 2008

A long time coming..

It has taken over 13 months of therapy, casting and many road trips to Dallas to prepare Diego for his next medical milestone. One that was realized on April 17th when he was fitted with a Hip, Knee, Ankle, Foot Orthosis or HKAFO brace. It started at 10 am when we met with Art, the cast removal guy. Diego never really liked Art thanks to the loud electric saw he uses to remove casts. So once Diego saw him enter the room, he started crying. Within 15 minutes Diego was cast free. It was so good to finally see his little legs again! Next we had to visit Mr. Kwan in Orthotics. We met with Kwan during an earlier visit to measure Diego for the braces. When Kwan entered the room he was carrying Diego's brace which was fitted with little tennis shoes. They were so cute! Kwan showed us how to put on the brace and work the joint locks. He also made a few adjustments to make it more comfortable which is very important since Diego is expected to wear the brace 23 hrs a day. Seeing Diego standing in his new brace and shoes was a real treat for us.

Now that Diego has graduated to wearing a brace, we can start making real progress towards learning to walk. There is still a lot of hard work and hours of therapy ahead. If everything goes well, we hope lil Diego will be able to walk by his next birthday. We want to thank all the wonderful people at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. Special thanks to Diego's orthopedic surgeon Dr. Birch, his nurse Amy and Kwan.