My Little Fish...

We have been very busy this week with Connor's PT schedule. One of the PT sessions is aqua therapy. This is, by far, Connor's favorite. He gets an hour of aqua therapy. Then there is an hour afterwards called "dressing" and "pin care". This consists of Connor showering off, getting dressed, back in the wheelchair. Then, we wheel him over to the pin care station. This is where we clean the pin sites with saline solution, drying them off, placing new sponges around each pin site. And, yes, it takes an hour to do all that. The other PT is called "land" PT, which is the one-on-one therapy. He had some great sessions this week. Interesting enough, his hip has a better range of motion (ROM) than his knee. The therapist like to get a ROM in the hip of 70 degrees while the External Fixator is on. Connor has already reached 65 with assistance. His knee is another story. The preferred ROM is 45-50 degrees while Ex Fix is on. His is only at 10 degrees. According to the Dr. and therapist, this is common for the knee to have difficulty after surgery due to the stiffness and trauma to the knee. There is an IT muscle that runs up along the side of our outer thigh that aids in the movement of the knee. 2 of the 6 pins in Connor's leg are placed in that IT muscle to the bone, therefore causing the stiffness. There are some tough moments for him with tears and grunts during PT but he continues to be a fighter. We continue to remind him that fighting it out now will make things easier later.  And, boy, that is his focus to get better so he can run, jump, and play with his friends again. We will rejoice when that day comes!
Thanks to my parents for staying with the girls again so Scott could join us for a few days. Looking forward to the girls joining us tomorrow. My sweet Callie girl turns "2"!!! We will all get to be together to celebrate. Missing my girls so much and so proud of them for handling our absence well. But then again, not sure how much they are missing us because they are getting so spoiled by grandma and Papa.
We continue to be amazed at Connor's perseverance through theses tough times. We have only been on this journey for 1 1/2 wks. and have already  taken away many life lessons. This is only the beginning for Connor on how he overcame adversity at such a young age. I can only imagine at the end of this journey, how we will look back at our experiences.