More amazing feats

So we have been wondering when Hannah might move on to using crutches or canes.  We played around with them once since her surgery but without much success.  Before surgery, she could stand with the crutches but not take steps independently.

We saw Hannah's regular physiatrist last week and we showed him how Hannah has been wanting to, and doing a really good job with, walking holding one of my hands.  She liked to do this in the past (pre-SDR) but would lean way into me and need a lot of support and would not be able to walk straight this way for very long.

Now she does this one-handed walking really well and asks to do it a lot.  So the physiatrist saw her walking and said she is definitely ready to start working on the crutches again.  I shared this with her PT, who then made a plan to work on that with Hannah when she came to our house last Tuesday.

The PT's initial plan was to have Hannah practice standing in the crutches independently. She put some blue duct tape down on the floor as a focal point in case they also did some practice steps.  But as soon as Hannah got helped into the crutches, she just took off walking in them! On.her.own!!!

By the time I got there with the video camera, she'd done 3 rounds of walking along the blue line and was starting to get fatigued and distracted so the clip below isn't her best effort, but it is still so exciting!

We didn't do any crutch walking while we were away for Thanksgiving, but Hannah and her PT talked about practicing a lot so she could show her friends at school, and also show family over Christmas.  Tonight before bed, Hannah did a lot more walking around the house.  She has figured out how to right herself when she starts to lose her balance, get stabilized, and then take a few steps.  She could even make a slight turn when needed.  It's pretty amazing.  She still has a long way to go but I can't believe how it just clicked all of a sudden for her, and she is also very motivated and excited about it right now which helps a lot.

We will definitely plan to bring them with us on our travels over Christmas and in the meantime, hopefully I'll take some more video of her progress as it continues.

But for now, here is the clip from Tuesday:

So much to be thankful for...