"You're makin' Good Bone"

said Dr. Standard. Woohoo! This is good news and not so good news all at the same time.

Dr. Standard :)

Last Thursday, we had our 4-week appointment. The doctor was so impressed with his bone growth in the xray that he suggested speeding up the turns from 4 a day to 5.

Gained 2.4 cm = 1 inch :) so far!!!

This is so the bone doesn't grow too quickly and harden because we'd have to stop :( (If we did 5 turns Jeff would be stretching more each day, just over a millimeter. That, however, would change the name of our blog to "Just over 1 Millimeter @ a Time" and I couldn't have that so I said, "No". Of course I'm joking about that last part.) Anyway, we really aren't speeding up the turns because PT actually suggested we slow it down to 3 turns since Jeffrey is not getting the range of motion in his knee that we would like. We are keeping it at 4 turns and adding a medicine into the mix! Naprosyn! It slows down the bone growth, which is kind of ironic because we're here to lengthen.
Basically, the bone stretches and new bone is forming. As the bone stretches the muscles tighten becoming painful and more difficult to bend at the knee. If we get to a point where he does not make any progress in bending and we are stuck at like 45 degrees, we have to stop lengthening. So we are on a mission to do more knee hang exercises so we can improve his degree of bending.

Knee hangs

Right now we are stuck at 55 degrees, which could be worse. It is painful for Jeffrey and his quad is getting stronger so he even fights the bends, the little bugger! Keep those prayers coming.
The bone groweth awesome, let's get that knee a bendin'! How low can you go?