These are Brennen’s Scoobys.
We have had them for one week now and currently we see them more often like the picture above than like this.
Right now Brennen wears them for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. Eventually he will be wearing them for most of the day, other than when he is sleeping. The arrival of the Scoobys has definitely caused some adjustments in our household. Obviously, the most affected is Brennen. The first day he got them he wore them for one hour. During that hour he pretty much cried the entire time and continuously asked me to take them off. He also refused to walk in them and just sat on the couch. As you can imagine, it was a LONG hour. I don’t think that they hurt him. I think he may experience some discomfort from his calves being stretched but I think he mostly gets upset because he doesn’t understand why he has to wear them. Luckily, as time has gone on he has become less resistant to them. The hubby has the difficult task of getting Brennen out of bed and into his Scoobys in the morning on the three days a week that Brennen goes to daycare. Brennen isn’t always very cooperative in the morning, so I give the hubby props for persevering with the Scoobys. As far as I go, I seem to be the one the gets the brunt of Brennen’s frustrations regarding the Scooby’s. He cries and resists them more often with me, but he is like that with me for most things. So I am just grinning and bearing it as I know this too shall pass.
Another challenging aspect of the Scoobys is finding shoes that can be worn with them. Because the Scoobys are made out of plastic they are very slippery on the bottom and thus have to be worn with shoes at all times. We were fortunate that Brennen already had one pair of shoes that could be worn with the Scoobys by opening the tongue up very wide and wedging them on.
It’s quite a workout just getting the shoes on. However, we were instructed by the orthotist not to get a size bigger because they would be too long in the toe area and Brennen would have trouble walking.
We also bought Brennen a pair of slippers to wear around the house that fit over his Scoobys easily.
Who am I kidding?!?! I let him wear them out of the house too. They are way easier to put on than the shoes and he likes them better. They have a rubber bottom, so I guess they can pass as part shoe / part slipper. I think.
We are certainly seeing a difference in Brennen’s walking pattern when he is wearing the Scoobys. With them on he is forced to walk heel to toe. We are optimistic that with time, the Scoobys will correct Brennen’s toe walking by retraining his brain to walk properly. The plan is for him to wear them for three months and then remove them to see if he maintains the heel to toe stride or if he goes back to walking on his toes. If he maintains the proper stride he would be done wearing them. If he goes back to toe walking he would wear them again for another three months. In the meantime, we are just going to make the best of it and encourage Brennen to be proud of himself and his Scoobys!
His argument was that Brennen’s foot could become deformed due to amount of pressure being placed on his toes and the tendons in his legs may not grow as long as they should due to the amount of time Brennen is on his toes. Although, this was not what we wanted to hear, we recognized that it was better to do the bracing sooner than later as the average time in an AFO is 3-12 months. We decided to try bracing now so that Brennen would be out of them before he started pre-school next year. So next week Brennen will be seeing a new Orthotist (his doc didn’t like the previous one the pt person sent us to) to get fitted for an AFO. I also inquired about the possibility of Brennen having some sort of sensory disorder. Here is a little background as to why I suspected a sensory disorder. It took Brennen until he was about 2 years of age before he would walk on grass, he still will not walk on sand, he has very sensitive hearing and is easily overwhelmed in crowded places. After some discussion, the doctor agreed with me and recognized that part of his toe walking may be due to sensory issues. However, insurance companies do not recognize sensory disorders as a medical issue, so any professional treatment would be out-of-pocket. In all reality, we have been treating Brennen’s sensory disorder on our own. We gradually expose him to things that make him uncomfortable until he becomes desensitized to it. We will continue to do this and we will research some ideas on the internet as well.
We will only have to do a x-ray every 6 months and visit the neurologists’ office every 3 months to see how the AFO is working. I am looking forward to a time in the future when all of this is just a vague memory, but in the meantime we are going to make the best of it and recognize that despite our challenges we are still very lucky to have so much happiness!
