Wednesday 17th December

I've been a bit slow on updating this blog just lately but I suppose that is probably because I no longer spend all day sitting in a hospital trying to pass the time of day!!
Well, following last weeks blog its been full on - left UCH last Monday evening and by 9am Tuesday we were in Stanmore being assessed for hydrotherapy and physio. No peasce for the wicked! They were really busy and we nearly didn't see anyone at all, but eventually after complaining we had got up so early to get there, we saw Sarah, a student physio on her last week of her placement. She gave the nod that Sarah was a suitable candidate for hydro, and we were sent home until the following day.
Wednesday was a later start and we were booked in for hydro at 11.30 and land physio at 2pm.
Hydro was wonderful - Sarah the fish returned to our lives and the constant grin on her face was a pleasure to see.Apart from when Sarah(physio) said she was going to time Sarah running round the pool - Sarah looked horrified and said 'Run?! Me?!'.Anyway, she did run, albeit slowly and it wasn't as bad as she thought!!
Land physio was less successful - she still has trouble getting her heel on the floor and basically that is what is stopping her walking.Parallel bars, scales to measure weight bearing, swiss balls and wobble boards have all been used over the last 7 days and today we had a bit of progress at last. The last week, after Amy the land physio had nagged her senseless, Sarah started to do proper exercises EVERY night. She even called me upstairs if I forgot.This has helped immensely. On Friday, Sarah managed to get 24.5 kilos of weight through her foot with Amy holding her knee - today, without being held, she got herself upright, not leaning back as normal, and 29 kilos was acheived - 50% of her body weight for ooh, about 3 seconds!! Not much, I hear you say, but in Sarahs world that is HUGE. The scales didn't wobble either, it wasn't a bounced 29 kilos, but a constant pressure, and I am soooo pleased!!Yesterday I asked her to walk on my hand and I could hardly feel any pressure. Today she did the same and it was firm pressure pushing my fingers into the ground.Go Girl!!! 2 more days of this to go, and I only hope she continues. She wants to go swimming properly at home now, and today she did widths of proper swimming strokes - including butterfly, and could still do them all - I thought she would have trouble but it seems she is fine. Only thing she can't do is walk up the ladder of the pool to climb out!!We'll have to enlist the help of the disabled hoist at the local pool for the time being!!
On the social front, she sang in a Christmas carol concert last Tuesday evening with her school which was lovely, and had a friend sleep over Friday night. Saturday evening she went out for pizza with the same friend and Sunday she spent the day with another friend putting up her Christmas decorations while dave and I watched Katie play indoor hockey all day.Yesterday was the Stanmore Xmas party with magic Dave, and last Friday was the UCH Xmas party in town.This afternoon we had a flying visit to Trafalgar School to see her old teachers to let them know how she has been getting on.Tomorrow she is going to the pantomime with the guides, and Tuesday the Xmas festivities begin with a trip to Uncle Bobs for the night en route to Ashford International Station to catch the train to Disneyland Paris - I CAN'T WAIT!!!!I'm more excited than Sarah!!!