Update on new legs, x rays, and starting school

It has been a while since I have written and I'm pretty sure she has had 3 legs since I last posted. She got an Eiffel Tower leg, a Tinkerbell leg, and now has a butterfly leg. As you can see by the next few pictures, she really wears out her legs! She was missing the big toe on her foot for about 2 months before we finally got her new leg.

 

 Here she is getting casted for her new leg:

She decorated it like a watermelon.:)

 

This was her most recent x-ray. Her prosthetic was pretty short on her and so that is why it has the 2 cm lift under it. As you can see by the x-ray, her knock knee is slowly getting worse. They are watching it and don't want to do the 8-plate surgery until they have to.They will wait until it starts hurting or until it gets so knock kneed that they have trouble fitting a prosthetic on her.. The longer they can wait, the better because then there is less of a likelihood of having to do the surgery twice.

  

There was a mix-up with the fabrics for her new leg. We brought a Hawaiian style fabric in for her new leg, but when we got there her prosthetist said that her leg fabric got mixed up! Luckily it was mixed up with a pink sparkly butterfly fabric or I think we might have had a very sad little girl on our hands! She was pretty excited about her new butterfly leg! She has now had that leg for 2 months and it;s been a good one so far. We went in once to have a little adjustment done because the inside of her knee was being rubbed raw. The prosthetist just adjusted it a little and it's been great ever since.

 

 

Sydney started 1st grade a few weeks ago as well! She's loving 1st grade and has done really well with it. The first day of first grade and Kindergarten I went in and gave a 5 minute presentation about her leg to all the little kids. I went in and basically explained that she has something different about her. She has a prosthetic that helps her walk just like how glasses can help kids to see and braces help kids teeth. All kids have things that make them different, and this is something that makes her different. I then passed around a couple of her old legs so the kids could touch and feel them, and then asked the kids if they had any questions. I feel this helped the kids get their questions and curiosity out and Sydney hasn't had problems with it so far in kindergarten and 1st grade.

This picture is my favorite! She wanted to show me how excited she was for 1st grade!😋

Sometime around Christmas last year, Sydney's prosthetist gave her the sweetest gift! He altered an American girl doll and put a prosthetic on it that matched her Eiffel Tower leg. It was the cutest thing and she really loves that doll!

Learning new things - kayaking, biking, swimming, tennis, gymastics, disneyland and the beach

Since it has been a year since my last post, I thought I would give an update on what she has been up to!

When we did the amputation we weren't sure how things would go for her, but she has really learned and grown so much and has proven just how much her amputation will not be slowing her down in life!

Sydney really loves gymnastics and is super determined!

The beam was a a little more tricky for her than the other students because she isn't able to move her ankle on her prosthetic foot to help balance. It took a littler longer to figure out, but she figured out her own way of doing it and got pretty good. This video was a little early on when she was still kind of struggling.

At the beginning of the summer we went to Disneyland. That was something I  was unsure about before going for our first time. I had heard that it could be difficult with a prosthetic, but we didnt have any problems. She's still only going on mostly kiddie rides, but she was able to do some of the bigger rides as well and no one batted an eye at her leg.

We also went to the beach twice this summer. She wore her leg all day at the beach. At the end of the day when she took her leg off she had LOTS of sand in it, but she didn't complain once about the sand bothering her.

Sydney had the opportunity to go paddle boarding and kayaking with Wasatch Adaptive Sports this summer and had a blast learning how to paddle board especially! Such a fun experience for her!

She also learned how to ride her bike without training wheels like a pro! We used a balance bike for a few days and within 1 or two tries, she had it down and was riding like a pro!

She also played tennis this summer and loved it!

Sydney and I attended a Big Little camp with Shriners this summer. It's where the patients with limb differences and past camp goers that are now grown get together for an all day camp! It was up at Snowbird and they had fishing and a hike and swimming etc. The kids had a blast! During it they took the kids to go fishing and the parents stayed back and they had a panel with some of the past camp members where they could answer your questions about how things have been for them now that they are older.  That was really great for me to be able to see some of the challenges that will probably come up but also see how great these kids are doing and what great people they have grown up to be!

Two of the "Big" camp members are current Paralympiads and are preparing for the next Olympics which is pretty cool! The young man in the picture below is on the U.S.A. Paralympic rugby team. It was a lot of fun for Sydney to interact with other kids that have limb differences, but I think it was especially cool for her to see these older kids that were just like her. She and I had so much fun!

 On the ski lift.

 On the alpine slide at Snowbird

New Ice Cream Cone Leg and One More in the Making!

New leg time! Her geometric leg was getting a little tight. When they made her leg it was already  a little small for her and she could only wear it with a nylon tights kind of sock, so when it started getting to small there wasn't any wiggle room for adjusting it and she needed a new leg. We went in and had her first casting/fitting. Then about a week later we went in for a fitting.

 We first had to go see a doctor to get a "prescription" for getting a new leg(you have to get a new prescription once a year).

 Sydney chose ice cream cone fabric for her leg.

 After seeing the doctor we went back into the lobby and waited for about an hour and a half and then were told that it was going to be another hour because our prosthetist accidentally broke the check socket and it would take him 2 hours to make a new one.

 So instead of waiting there for another 2 hours, we headed out to the movies and saw Finding Dory! That was a fun little twist to our day!

 After the movie was over we headed back to the doctor's and they did a fitting with her check socket.

 And funny enough! We came back a week and a half later to get her finished leg and she was wearing the same dress as the time before when we went.

It is now a week and a half later and we went in to see the prosthetist to have her leg adjusted and also to see the doctor. We saw the prosthetist and then headed to see the doctor and they did x-rays and when they did that they found out that Sydney's new ice cream cone leg is actually 1.7 cm too short for her(which was a little satisfying to hear because I had mentioned that I thought she looked a little lopsided to the prosthetist, whom we love- don't get me wrong, and he thought it looked alright). So then after seeing the doctor we headed back over to see the prosthetist to get her fitted for a new leg. She'll probably get her new ice cream cone leg in about a week and a half.

Dance Class and Ice Skating with her Prosthetic

Sydney has been doing dance class and an ice skating class and has been loving them! Dance has been good. Since she is pretty young, her prosthetic hasn't really  held her back in any way because they aren't really being too techinical with their techniques(like pointing your toes). The only thing that has been different is the amount of holes that she has gotten in her tights thanks to her prosthetic..  but even without a prosthetic I think she would have gotten a hole or two by now anyway!

 he recently started an ice skating class and is LOVING that. She doesn't get excited about dance like she does with ice skating!(she's the one in the blue coat in all the below pictures). There is one small challenge with ice skating with her prosthetic- the heel in the ice skates. Here is a little heel in the ice skates and because her prosthetic is made with a flat foot, it forces her leg forward/ her knee has to be pretty bent to be in the skates. Luckily with ice skating, you have to bend your knees quite a bit anyway, but it definitely is a little more than a normal bend. She does so good with it though! IT doesn't seem to bug her at all! Her determination with it inspires me!

She loves to skate on her own, which actually means shuffling/trying to keep her balance the entire time, but it's adorable and so fun to see her determination to get it! Her favorite thing to do in class is throw the little stuffed die that they have and skate to get it. She skated to the center of the rink the other day on her own just playing that game.:)

 Skating to the center of the rink!

Time For Her 2nd Leg!

Lots has happened since my last post! Time to get all caught up!

Sydney now has a new leg, but leading up to it she had 3 appointments to adjust her old leg(her big hero 6 leg). One of the times she needed it to be taller, so they took off the foot and gave her a new foot with which they shaved less off of the foot to add a little height (she is so short that on the first leg they had to cut a crescent shape into the foot to get the foot under her stump/prosthetic). At her other appointments they were just adjusting the foam-like liner (she's wearing it in the picture below). It was putting pressure in certain spots because she was growing so they just shaved the foam liner thing down a little in the pressure spots.

After having her first leg for over 6 months (which they told us that her first leg would probably only last about 3-6, so we got some good use out of that leg!) it was finally time to get a new leg. She got her new leg at the end of February. Our prothetist told us that when she started having red marks on the front of her shin up towards her knee, or when she started getting red marks/blisters on the bottom/front of her stump, that it was most likely time to get a new leg. She started having those issues and also started having discomfort on the top of her knee since her prosthetic goes up over her knee to help with hyper-extension and her leg had apparently grown to be too tall for where her prosthesis's knee placement was.

These are from when she was getting her mold done for them to make her new leg. Then we just had to wait for that to be done.

In the meantime she wore her old leg. That wasn't too bad, I just had to remember that she might want to sit in the stroller sometimes when we were walking a lot because of discomfort.

About 1 week after getting the mold done for her new leg, we went in for the first fitting with the clear mold. One week after that (so 2 weeks after getting the mold) we went in for the fitting of her new leg!

Her leg was a little tight, but after making a few adjustments and shaving down the inner liner a little it now fits well! Sydney has lost the majority of her calf muscle(this is normal btw) and so the bottom of her stump is a little bigger than her  calf is. This is a good thing because the bulbous part of her stump will be able to hold her leg on better. It also meant that they had to mess with the leg a little to be able to get it on. Her prosthetist cut a slit into the liner so she could pull it on, and for some reason that did the trick!

 She also wears a super thin panty-hose like sock (seen below) with this prosthetic because it was a little tighter. If she uses her 1-ply socks, she can't get her leg all the way on. These thin socks are apparently usually used for arm prosthetics, but  it worked great for her skinny little leg!:)

 Things have been good since getting her new leg and Sydney's doing great!

First Swimming Experience

Sydney had her first experience swimming since her amputation. She did great! She tried both prosthetic-on and prosthetic-off swimming. When she was just swimming around she liked not having her leg on, but when she wanted to do the little playgound, she preferred it be on.

 When she had her leg on, we just put a sock on with the foam insert and then her leg - all like normal. It all just got soggy and so when she was just swimming around it got heavy and she said it was also falling off a little and so we took it off when she didn't want to do the playground.

She did great though! It's kind of interesting standing on the sidelines watching though because you can see some people staring. That's something I love about kids though, they either don't notice the staring, or if they do, they don't care! Kids are the best! I could learn a few things from that attitude!