Chris's Toe Walking

About 6 months ago we noticed that Chris was pretty much walking on his toes constantly. I'm not sure that people really noticed it unless I said something. My parents noticed it. He has pretty much been doing it forever but in the last 6 months it has been constant.

I started asking Chris some questions about his toe walking. He originally told me it wasn't a big deal because he could just wear high heal shoes when he got older. Then he told me he doesn't put his heals down because it hurts his back. That is when I started getting concerned.

So back in June I took Chris to the doctors and I really believed that they were going to tell me that he was going to grow out of the toe walking and it wasn't a big deal. Instead the doctor told me that Chris's heal cords were pretty tight and he needed to see and orthopedic surgeon.

More then a month later we finally had our appointment and this time I was sure that they were going to send Chris to Physical Therapy and teach me how to do some stretches with him. Wrong again...they told us that besides PT he also needed to wear braces on his legs all day. The took the molds of his feet that same day and we had his braces a little over a week later.

Our first day of PT they did an evaluation on Chris and I got the results today. This is what they said about how Chris walks. (Now if you know what this means...please explain because I really have no idea.) Christopher walks on his toes with his hips slightly abducted and lower extremities externally rotated. However with his braces on he displays an improved gait pattern showing a more defined heel/toe pattern with symmetrical arm swing and adequate trunk rotation.

Basically what I got is that Chris walks so much better with his braces. That isn't news to me. My mom and I could see that the first day he put them on.

So here is a list of the problems going on currently. (Remember I thought they were originally going to tell me that he was going to grow out of the toe walking and send me home!)
1. Decreased bilateral ankle range of motion
2. Decreased hip external rotation and hamstring range of motion.
3. Decreased stationary balance
4. Decreased dynamic balance
5. Abnormality of gait pattern

The cool thing about all this is that the Physical Therapists think that they can fix all of this in 12 weeks! Pretty cool. He will though be wearing his braces until at least January. I am keeping my fingers crossed that all of this works!