Happy New Year!

Can you believe it is now 2019?! Someone the other day said it was 20 years ago now that it was 1999!   That blows my mind and reminds me that I’m not as young as I sometimes think. Ha!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!  Our little family saw lots of family, played with friends, enjoyed board games, read a lot of books, battled never ending colds (seems like everyone has been sick), ate lots of yummy food,  went sledding twice, watched a few movies, binge watched a few shows (The Last Kingdom…sooo good), organized a few things and overall enjoyed the time together!

Before the Christmas break it was quite busy.  Evie had her first Holiday Concert at school and it was great!  Her class performed three songs followed by all the classes singing Jingle Bells.  She did amazing and all the kids were cute!  In between Christmas get togethers, Evie continued her swimming lessons and regular physio sessions.  She also tried the L300 Foot Drop system from Bioness at SMILE one day.  This system was designed to help people with neurological conditions including Multiple Sclerosis and Cerebral Palsy.  As their website says, ” The L300’s advanced technology delivers programmed, low-level electrical stimulation to activate nerves and muscles that lift the foot, giving you the mobility to step back into life.”

There are dozens of stimulation levels and the first time Evie wore it and walked, I could see a difference right away.  She didn’t tolerate that level for long but even with less stimulation her heel was down almost the whole time she walked.  The rep explained that the system knows when she is swinging her leg to take a step and will time the stimulation at the moment she needs to flex her foot to put her foot down.  In theory, Evie wouldn’t need AFOs any more if she were to use this system to strengthen her muscles and help create a new gait pattern.  We will be looking into a trial with the system (pictured above around her left leg).  It could really help with that toe walking that just won’t seem to go away!

Now that school is back in session, her therapy schedule also commences!  We will finally be going to Train Like Heroes as we had to cancel our first session due to illness. She is looking forward to it!  Evie will continue with swimming and will be starting skating lessons at the end of the month.  We are also gearing up for all the birthdays as three out of the four of us have one in the next 4 weeks!

With a new year, we have new goals!  Evie and I each wrote down several goals for the year.  She came up with hers on her own and they include swimming solo, doing more crafts, learning math and running faster!  You go girl!

Hello 2019…we are excited to see what happens this year!