Limb lengthening: distraction phase

You start to lengthen about a week after surgery. Fi was in minimal to know pain, by the time we were out of the hospital she was on Tylenol only.
By the time we started to lengthen, she took daily one dose of tylenol, an hour before physical therapy. She slept through every night, so her pain has been a lot less than expected, except for the last 2 weeks of lengthening and walking/weight bearing, more on that later.

The lengthening phase is quite involved: she has 6 struts on her ex fixes, you turn 2 max at the same time, so you turn 3 times a week based on a colour coded schedule. As with anything it takes a bit of time to figure it out, but I have 0 manual dexterity and I could do it, so anyone can.
The internals you turn using a powerful magnet that you hold over the thigh over the line as marked for you. We have done 3-4-5 times per day, so the max was 8 turns combined. The most important thing is to keep track and write down what you have done. So you can calculate expected bone growth and compare to the x-rays.

Equally important and a lot more time consuming is the physical therapy exercises. Fi had 2 hours land therapy 5 days a week at the hospital + 1 hour of pool therapy most days.

They mainly focus on range of motion of hips, knees, ankles so the soft tissue can help accommodate the bone growth.

Fi's therapists have been absolutely amazing, her main therapist has been doing this all day long every day for nearly a decade, so every day if we had a question, she had an answer and she was always right.

You then also do several sets of exercises and stretches at home that you are taught, it is a lot of hard work, but very rewarding to see the progress.

There is no hospital PT on the weekend, so you get to work a lot harder during the weekend and Monday is typically their hardest, stiffest day.

The therapists take measurements regularly and before each clinic and the surgeon bases their decision to continue to treat and the rate of lengthening on the x-rays at clinic, physical exam and the PT report.

It's fair to say that Fi spent about 130-50 hours exercising/in PT/stretching per month.

The biggest lesson for me during this whole process is that you have to take it one day at the time, I am a planner, so I found that tricky.

The other thing is all the practical things, noone tells you about. Next post will be about that....