Time to catch up!

It's been a while! - nothing much has happened over the last few weeks., - same old, same old. - We did however, decide to do a day trip. We drove down to Washington, (1hr away) and did the tourist thing! - White House, Washington's Monument, Reflecting Pool etc. Matthew will attach some pics. From there we went down to Potomac Mills Outlet Mall (ext. 1/2hr) and did some Christmas shopping! - the mall has over 200 outlet stores in it - and we managed to get quite a bit done!. F/U with Dr. Paley - on Monday at 9:45 - got there 10ish, had exrays by 11 (from front). Paley came in and we went over the fact that Matt's shins are ok - once legs are straight the 'knock knee' look will disappear, and that as they were bent, exray was bascially useless to determine length gained. Sent us back for exrays from side for actual view. Initial exray showed femurs at 5.6 and tibias at 4.8, new exray showed actual length for femurs at 6.2 and tibias 5.4 - quite a difference! - So, all in all, Matthew has gained 11.6cm - or just over 4.5" from this surgery. He should come out of this with his legs straight and even. We have officially stopped turning and Dr. Paley has instructed Matthew to get as much therapy over the next two weeks as he can get - so he is now scheduled for 2 hours a day with a bit of a break in-between. Once done, the plan is to have a quick lunch and then go to the pool where he will work a little more, but mostly let the heated water soothe him. Our next appt. with Paley is on Dec. 4th - at that time, he suggested that if there isn't a big improvement from therapy by then that he will consider a muscle release at that time - his delay in doing it is that he wasn't 100% certain that he needed it and didn't want to open him up and find there wasn't much he could do. So, now we wait again. As he has stopped turning, there should be much better results from therapy, so, we'll see..........

Well - this is now the 27th - after a week of therapy, his left leg is almost straight, but the right is still being stubborn. We even took Friday off and went to New Jersey with another family for Thanksgiving (US), managed to visit with Marlo and family while we were there too, and even got more Christmas shoppng in! - Unfortunately, it was crazy for driving! - took us 6 hours to get there and 71/2 to get home! - should have taken 4! - Oh well, now we can say we've been to New Jersey. - Marlo and family had wanted us to visit this weekend. - Dec. 3rd., but we are now thinking that we'll stay here - it's quite a distance to go for a quick weekend. - Also, we don't want to miss any more therapy as our next appt. is on the following Monday. I think we'll try to go up for a longer visit when we come back for pin removal.

So, we should be all caught up now - sorry for not blogging more frequently. But, the count down is now on - only 17 days left to go! -

Must say though, sure don't miss the snow they are all getting at home!

Take care all, talk to you again soon,
Matt & Pam