We’ve been asked to get a referral for yet another specialist for K. This time for an orthopaedist.

Today we had PT for K. During the session, I don’t know why I thought of it, but I grabbed my cell phone. I showed her a video I’d taken about two weeks ago of my girls. In it, you see many of K’s issues presented rather boldly. She places her left foot poorly and falls to the ground. She struggles to get up because her left leg is in the air and she doesn’t have the strength to get the leverage. When she does get up she walks to the camera, and then away…and you see her ‘drunken sailor’ gait and how she doesn’t walk in a straight line. At the very end, you see her chase M right up until she stops short before walking on a blanket (an uneven surface).

I found out how good I’ve become at detecting her issues because without a word from me, the PT commented on everything I saw in the video. She became really concerned. We started talking about the issues that she wasn’t resolving, and how she’s smart enough to learn what hurts/makes her work enough to refuse to do it when she sees the toy again…but she can’t seem to pick up on things like proper distance to an edge of a step, or stepping down without turning her foot in, or judging proper step distance.

She has reccommended a vision check. We don’t think there are any issues there, but we want to rule out poor depth perception as a cause for a few of her issues.

Then she reccommended the orthopaedist. She said that he “may” say that it’s solely a strength issue and tell us to continue with the strengthening exercises. BUT, that he may reccommend braces. We’ve expected, and feared, this. All we can do now is make the appointment and hope for the best…but I can’t tell you how I’ve worried about having to make this call. More so than I was concerned about the neurologist.