UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
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IsysMom
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Tue May 11, 2010 11:00 pm
- Injury Description, Date, extent, surgical intervention etc: My daughter who was born on March 25, 2010 has a brachail plexis injury to her left arm.
- Location: Bossier City, Louisiana
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
I am new to this and have so many unanswered questions. I have a daughter that was born on March 25, 2010 she has a left arm brachail plexis injury. We are currently going to pt once a week and doing exercises at home once a week. Could anyone please tell me more about this and also about any methods or exercises you may have used to help with your child. Thanks
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momofsara
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:40 pm
- Injury Description, Date, extent, surgical intervention etc: My daugther has a ROBPI and is now 1.5 years old. She has not had any surgery as of now but goes through extensive therapy.
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
The beginning is so hard becuase other then seeing a specialist, going to therapy, and staying consistant with the home exerices all you can do is wait. The waiting for recovery is so difficult or waiting for that 3 month period when they decide if your child is a canidate for surgery. At about 3 months is when they started using kinesiotape on my daughter who is now one in a half. Before that, they used a brace that the orthotist had made to help with elbow flexsion. I know I have talked to other parents who have said that their child wore theratogs, but I can not talk about that from personal experiance. Please feel free to email me at betsyanncastillo@yahoo.com if you have any questios or join us on Facebook at Chicago Brachial Plexus Organization. Betsy
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Jennifer P
- Posts: 220
- Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2009 7:12 pm
- Injury Description, Date, extent, surgical intervention etc: LOBPI
- Location: Pacific Northwest
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
I am 26 living with the same injury as your daughter. We meet on the UBPN chatroom (http://ubpn.org/index.php?option=com_aj ... Itemid=121) Wednesday evenings (around 7pm PST for me) and you are more than welcome to sign on and ask me and anyone else questions about BPI!
One thing I can assure you is that the injury will not prevent your daughter from becoming a healthy, strong and beautiful young lady!
One thing I can assure you is that the injury will not prevent your daughter from becoming a healthy, strong and beautiful young lady!
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Hi Jennifer
My name is MaryAnna my son is frankie he is 17 and was born with a left bpi, I don't know what state you live in but you should start looking for a bpi specialist right away don't rely on your neurologists. By finding one now and having them follow your baby from the start you will feel more at ease if surgery is recommened and you will have contact with a specialist if problems arise. Also I know with our insurance referals are needed and they can take time. Philly has a Shriners Hosp that is free and they have a very good bpi team from surgeons to therapist . There is also a listing here with Dr's
My name is MaryAnna my son is frankie he is 17 and was born with a left bpi, I don't know what state you live in but you should start looking for a bpi specialist right away don't rely on your neurologists. By finding one now and having them follow your baby from the start you will feel more at ease if surgery is recommened and you will have contact with a specialist if problems arise. Also I know with our insurance referals are needed and they can take time. Philly has a Shriners Hosp that is free and they have a very good bpi team from surgeons to therapist . There is also a listing here with Dr's
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happyllama
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue May 18, 2010 1:35 am
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Hi Isys mom,
I apologize in advance, I know this might get lengthy. I want to convey the importance of early intervention with a physical therapist because in our case it made all the difference in the world. We also felt like there were SO many questions that we could not find answers for when we asked the drs. and therapists.
Our son, the first baby we had, was born 8 years ago in Chicago suburbs with a right arm injury. It was devastating. We were told immediately by the dr. and staff following delivery, he was over 11 pounds and needless to say got a little "stuck." 2.5 hours stuck, to be precise-miraculously no problems besides his arm injury and my broken tail bone.
So our baby could not lift his arm or move his fingers, his arm was like a limp noodle. We used a safety pin and pinned his arm (the sleeve of his shirt) across his body to his shirt to keep it from flopping backwards and possibly doing any further damage when people would hold him, or pick him up. We were so depressed that we couldn't even bear to explain it to our friends. Our experienced pediatrician readily admitted that she did not have much knowledge on this topic. She went promptly home from the hospital the morning he was born and came right back with all sorts of information...computer print outs and phone numbers for us. She was great! She located a therapist for us before we even left the hospital as well as a neurologist/surgeon who specializes in bpi. For us, there were great feelings of depression and concern and even some guilt.
So, we started taking our son 2 times a week to the local therapists (we had 2 there working together with him) starting when he was 10 days old. We also had a neurologist at a children's hospital that we visited once a month. We did this for 2 years straight and we were very committed to practicing the physical therapy exercises at home. The therapists were much more helpful in the long run than the surgeon/neurologist.
In the beginning, it appeared quite hopeless. We faithfully did the exercises daily, sometimes several times a day and felt like we were just going through the motions with no progress. After 3.5 months of zero arm movement (and I mean a big fat zero), I noticed one afternoon, while he laid on his baby playmat/gym that his fingers were just giving a slight twitch... finally! Shortly after that, and right at four months of age he was able to slightly raise his arm about 30 degrees off of the floor, while on his back. That was all, but it was so exciting and it gave us so much hope! So we continued the exercises and very slowly he was able to show more and more movement daily with his right arm. He was mostly just slightly raising and lowering it.
At our therapy center there was one other girl who was age 3 that had been treated with the same injury. She was the only person we knew and we felt lucky to be introduced to her one day. She walked with a slight bend in her elbow, had difficulty placing her hands palm side up and one issue regarding her feet. However, the therapy clinic considered her quite successful and I remember feeling that if my son could end up as well as that we would be so perfectly thrilled. At that time too, we were just praying for some movement in his limp noodle arm, he was about 1 month old. Besides this one girl, doctors and therapists alike really could not give us much information as to what we could expect. We turned to the internet and of course scared ourselves silly with the worse case scenarios. Don't do that.
We had excellent therapists who worked extremely hard to figure out how to get our son moving in the right direction. It looked mostly like play, but the sessions were long and tiring and the baby really had a work out. We joked that he was the only infant on the block with abs of steel! They did a lot of sitting and placing him in correct crawling position, and emphasized the important of crawling and weight bearing, and symmetry and range of motion. I became quite educated too. They were not afraid to try out some new methods. And we certainly had our share of bumps in the road. You will become familiar with terms like contracture (tightening of the muscles causing the bend in the elbow that is difficult to loosen up.) Supination (palms facing up when the elbows are bent and arms are placed in front of the body.) And shoulder girdle stability. (His shoulder girdle is not the most stable and you can tell if his shirt is off because his shoulder blade wings outwards.)These were the biggest issues we encountered in therapy sessions, especially the elbow contracture. And just when we thought we had everything together and working, well a growth spurt would come along and throw it all off again. The developmental stages and growth do throw some kinks in the progress.
The therapists wanted to use special therapy tape, a sort of splint on his arm and electrical stimulation at one point. Initially the specialty surgeon told us to hold off on the tape on an infant so young. So we did. He felt it could cause a bad skin irritation/infection. I don't remember the age, perhaps it was around 7 or 9 months and we had not seen much progress with the supination. Our options were to use botox that the dr. suggested...or the tape that the therapist suggested. Tough decisions. We went with the tape and a splint, which wrapped around his thumb and up his forearm. So it made it easier for the muscles to supinate when we worked on that. I am sure there is a name for that blue splint we used, but that has escaped my memory. Wait...I found a photo of it, called the McKie thumb splint. He wore it just like you see here in this photo! http://www.rehabmart.com/imagesfromsp/sp783604L.jpg Well, about a month of taping that arm and lo and behold it worked! (They did a type of taping when he was really young and then this splint when he was a little older.)
He was up and crawling by 8 months! Not too shabby for a guy with a limp noodle arm for four months. Now, we did have some obstacles with the crawling too. He preferred to shift all his weight to his strong arm and scoot on his butt. That was not acceptable the therapists told me. We had to get him in a pattern on his hands and knees...so more work. He did learn to crawl correctly, but he sometimes needed to be corrected when he would slip into the scoot pattern. The therapists put a great deal of emphasis on correct crawling. The weight bearing he had to do on his right arm was especially helpful too.
Next came the idea of the electrical stimulation (called e stim.) That was around the age of one year. He was really developing a bend in his elbow (carrying his arm across the front of his body.) So again, the surgeon advised against e-stim, which back then was not apparently used much with children his age. He again suggested botox to loosen up the tight muscles, thus easing the contracture away. The problem with the botox is that he would have to be anesthetized because they had to inject some deep muscles and second, they were not sure it would work or have lasting effects if it did work. We decided against the botox once again.
And again, we went with the therapists and accepted the e-stim. With more exercises and the stimulation, it worked! It was hardly overnight, it was a really slow process, but his elbow started to straighten out. They measured the contracture after every session, and I believe it started at 15 degrees, soon it was down to nothing...day of celebration at our house!
Now I should point out here that our son did not appear to have nerves that were torn, which is why surgery was not discussed. It appears that the nerves were quite stretched and bruised up, but that is not as severe as being torn, which is why it could repair itself to some degree. It just took a long time, and we had to watch everything every step of the way. It is easy for them to fall into bad habits, moving the arm in an easy way, but in a way that will not give them much range of motion, is what I mean.
At the age of two my son was not doing much talking so we started speech therapy. Most of the drs. and therapists alike said there was no correlation to the injury. However, the speech therapists said that most definitely there could be a correlation between the nerve damage and the gross motor skills, and speech development. I believe she was correct. It wasn't long before she had him singing his abc's. He also started going to an occupational therapist to work on his hand movements and fine motor skills once a week from age 2 to age 3. And we also consulted with a hand surgeon, mainly to discuss the issue of supination. There were times when supination was very difficult and he could not do it without some help.
Now, my son is 8 and he is both left handed and right handed. I think it is a result of the injury. We do have several left handed family members, but I believe that he was born right handed and learned how to compensate with his left hand. Even his teachers have a difficult time figuring out which hand is dominant. Another possibility I consider is that he was born left handed, but the therapists for the first three years really focused on his right, they had him do EVERYTHING with that right hand. So, it is possible that he uses his right hand from time to time because he has learned how and has been encouraged to do things right handed.
The surgeon and the therapists consider him 100% recovered from his injury and there really isn't anything he can't do. There are a few issues that are still apparent, even with his successful recovery, his shoulder girdle is still not entirely stable, his shoulder blade will still slightly wing out -no one notices it except his parents of course! And he really has to work to bring his forearm straight up to his bicep, and supinate (touching his right fingertips to his right shoulder.) But he can do it. He can easily supinate otherwise, and he has no contracture in his elbow anymore.
Furthermore, he is testing for a blue belt in tae kwon do, he can do the best cartwheels and handstands in his gymnastics class. He loves to swim in deep water, he plays baseball on a local little league team, and he rides his bike and roller blades all over the place. He learned how to write cursive this year in school without difficulty too!
And, by the way, he now has a baby sister who was born without any incident and needless to say that her two flailing arms were always a source of great happiness for me...even when she managed to pull on my hair during feedings : )
I shared this story here because his 8th birthday is coming up next week and I remember the day of his birth like yesterday. I have the most empathy for anyone who has to receive news of this type of injury with a newborn baby. I understand how confusing it can be, how difficult to find information on the topic and why you might be looking for some stories to give you some encouragement. This is definitely one of those stories!
I apologize in advance, I know this might get lengthy. I want to convey the importance of early intervention with a physical therapist because in our case it made all the difference in the world. We also felt like there were SO many questions that we could not find answers for when we asked the drs. and therapists.
Our son, the first baby we had, was born 8 years ago in Chicago suburbs with a right arm injury. It was devastating. We were told immediately by the dr. and staff following delivery, he was over 11 pounds and needless to say got a little "stuck." 2.5 hours stuck, to be precise-miraculously no problems besides his arm injury and my broken tail bone.
So our baby could not lift his arm or move his fingers, his arm was like a limp noodle. We used a safety pin and pinned his arm (the sleeve of his shirt) across his body to his shirt to keep it from flopping backwards and possibly doing any further damage when people would hold him, or pick him up. We were so depressed that we couldn't even bear to explain it to our friends. Our experienced pediatrician readily admitted that she did not have much knowledge on this topic. She went promptly home from the hospital the morning he was born and came right back with all sorts of information...computer print outs and phone numbers for us. She was great! She located a therapist for us before we even left the hospital as well as a neurologist/surgeon who specializes in bpi. For us, there were great feelings of depression and concern and even some guilt.
So, we started taking our son 2 times a week to the local therapists (we had 2 there working together with him) starting when he was 10 days old. We also had a neurologist at a children's hospital that we visited once a month. We did this for 2 years straight and we were very committed to practicing the physical therapy exercises at home. The therapists were much more helpful in the long run than the surgeon/neurologist.
In the beginning, it appeared quite hopeless. We faithfully did the exercises daily, sometimes several times a day and felt like we were just going through the motions with no progress. After 3.5 months of zero arm movement (and I mean a big fat zero), I noticed one afternoon, while he laid on his baby playmat/gym that his fingers were just giving a slight twitch... finally! Shortly after that, and right at four months of age he was able to slightly raise his arm about 30 degrees off of the floor, while on his back. That was all, but it was so exciting and it gave us so much hope! So we continued the exercises and very slowly he was able to show more and more movement daily with his right arm. He was mostly just slightly raising and lowering it.
At our therapy center there was one other girl who was age 3 that had been treated with the same injury. She was the only person we knew and we felt lucky to be introduced to her one day. She walked with a slight bend in her elbow, had difficulty placing her hands palm side up and one issue regarding her feet. However, the therapy clinic considered her quite successful and I remember feeling that if my son could end up as well as that we would be so perfectly thrilled. At that time too, we were just praying for some movement in his limp noodle arm, he was about 1 month old. Besides this one girl, doctors and therapists alike really could not give us much information as to what we could expect. We turned to the internet and of course scared ourselves silly with the worse case scenarios. Don't do that.
We had excellent therapists who worked extremely hard to figure out how to get our son moving in the right direction. It looked mostly like play, but the sessions were long and tiring and the baby really had a work out. We joked that he was the only infant on the block with abs of steel! They did a lot of sitting and placing him in correct crawling position, and emphasized the important of crawling and weight bearing, and symmetry and range of motion. I became quite educated too. They were not afraid to try out some new methods. And we certainly had our share of bumps in the road. You will become familiar with terms like contracture (tightening of the muscles causing the bend in the elbow that is difficult to loosen up.) Supination (palms facing up when the elbows are bent and arms are placed in front of the body.) And shoulder girdle stability. (His shoulder girdle is not the most stable and you can tell if his shirt is off because his shoulder blade wings outwards.)These were the biggest issues we encountered in therapy sessions, especially the elbow contracture. And just when we thought we had everything together and working, well a growth spurt would come along and throw it all off again. The developmental stages and growth do throw some kinks in the progress.
The therapists wanted to use special therapy tape, a sort of splint on his arm and electrical stimulation at one point. Initially the specialty surgeon told us to hold off on the tape on an infant so young. So we did. He felt it could cause a bad skin irritation/infection. I don't remember the age, perhaps it was around 7 or 9 months and we had not seen much progress with the supination. Our options were to use botox that the dr. suggested...or the tape that the therapist suggested. Tough decisions. We went with the tape and a splint, which wrapped around his thumb and up his forearm. So it made it easier for the muscles to supinate when we worked on that. I am sure there is a name for that blue splint we used, but that has escaped my memory. Wait...I found a photo of it, called the McKie thumb splint. He wore it just like you see here in this photo! http://www.rehabmart.com/imagesfromsp/sp783604L.jpg Well, about a month of taping that arm and lo and behold it worked! (They did a type of taping when he was really young and then this splint when he was a little older.)
He was up and crawling by 8 months! Not too shabby for a guy with a limp noodle arm for four months. Now, we did have some obstacles with the crawling too. He preferred to shift all his weight to his strong arm and scoot on his butt. That was not acceptable the therapists told me. We had to get him in a pattern on his hands and knees...so more work. He did learn to crawl correctly, but he sometimes needed to be corrected when he would slip into the scoot pattern. The therapists put a great deal of emphasis on correct crawling. The weight bearing he had to do on his right arm was especially helpful too.
Next came the idea of the electrical stimulation (called e stim.) That was around the age of one year. He was really developing a bend in his elbow (carrying his arm across the front of his body.) So again, the surgeon advised against e-stim, which back then was not apparently used much with children his age. He again suggested botox to loosen up the tight muscles, thus easing the contracture away. The problem with the botox is that he would have to be anesthetized because they had to inject some deep muscles and second, they were not sure it would work or have lasting effects if it did work. We decided against the botox once again.
And again, we went with the therapists and accepted the e-stim. With more exercises and the stimulation, it worked! It was hardly overnight, it was a really slow process, but his elbow started to straighten out. They measured the contracture after every session, and I believe it started at 15 degrees, soon it was down to nothing...day of celebration at our house!
Now I should point out here that our son did not appear to have nerves that were torn, which is why surgery was not discussed. It appears that the nerves were quite stretched and bruised up, but that is not as severe as being torn, which is why it could repair itself to some degree. It just took a long time, and we had to watch everything every step of the way. It is easy for them to fall into bad habits, moving the arm in an easy way, but in a way that will not give them much range of motion, is what I mean.
At the age of two my son was not doing much talking so we started speech therapy. Most of the drs. and therapists alike said there was no correlation to the injury. However, the speech therapists said that most definitely there could be a correlation between the nerve damage and the gross motor skills, and speech development. I believe she was correct. It wasn't long before she had him singing his abc's. He also started going to an occupational therapist to work on his hand movements and fine motor skills once a week from age 2 to age 3. And we also consulted with a hand surgeon, mainly to discuss the issue of supination. There were times when supination was very difficult and he could not do it without some help.
Now, my son is 8 and he is both left handed and right handed. I think it is a result of the injury. We do have several left handed family members, but I believe that he was born right handed and learned how to compensate with his left hand. Even his teachers have a difficult time figuring out which hand is dominant. Another possibility I consider is that he was born left handed, but the therapists for the first three years really focused on his right, they had him do EVERYTHING with that right hand. So, it is possible that he uses his right hand from time to time because he has learned how and has been encouraged to do things right handed.
The surgeon and the therapists consider him 100% recovered from his injury and there really isn't anything he can't do. There are a few issues that are still apparent, even with his successful recovery, his shoulder girdle is still not entirely stable, his shoulder blade will still slightly wing out -no one notices it except his parents of course! And he really has to work to bring his forearm straight up to his bicep, and supinate (touching his right fingertips to his right shoulder.) But he can do it. He can easily supinate otherwise, and he has no contracture in his elbow anymore.
Furthermore, he is testing for a blue belt in tae kwon do, he can do the best cartwheels and handstands in his gymnastics class. He loves to swim in deep water, he plays baseball on a local little league team, and he rides his bike and roller blades all over the place. He learned how to write cursive this year in school without difficulty too!
And, by the way, he now has a baby sister who was born without any incident and needless to say that her two flailing arms were always a source of great happiness for me...even when she managed to pull on my hair during feedings : )
I shared this story here because his 8th birthday is coming up next week and I remember the day of his birth like yesterday. I have the most empathy for anyone who has to receive news of this type of injury with a newborn baby. I understand how confusing it can be, how difficult to find information on the topic and why you might be looking for some stories to give you some encouragement. This is definitely one of those stories!
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IsysMom
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Tue May 11, 2010 11:00 pm
- Injury Description, Date, extent, surgical intervention etc: My daughter who was born on March 25, 2010 has a brachail plexis injury to her left arm.
- Location: Bossier City, Louisiana
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Thank you all for your thoughts and for the information you have shared with me. It is really encourging to know that she will move her left arm eventually. I am trying my hardest to be patient and wait on God to work his will. I made a mistake in my original posting and stated that we do exercises only once a week, we do exercises (both were we place her on a beach ball and do weight bearing and then the aggrevation exercises or thats what I call them since it seems to aggreviate her, we are tickling her arm and making her touch her hair, mouth, nose and other objects) and ROM everyday. Sorry about that, I did not realize it until after it posted. As far as weight bearing is there any other exercises you may know of we could do other than the beach ball? In happyllama post, it was interesting about the stim they wanted to use. I am so thankful that each of ya'll have had a great result. Also we do currently go to see the Shriner's Hospital to be assessed each month. We went for our second visit this past Tuesday, they said she is improving in her range of motion in her risk and opening her fingers. Again thank you all for your time and thoughts.
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Felicia'smom
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 10:18 pm
- Injury Description, Date, extent, surgical intervention etc: My daughter was born with OBPI.
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
You also helped me a lot. I have a little girl who was born December 22, 2009 and she was born with a left brachial plexus injury. Her older sister my 1 yr old ended up with a broken clavicle. But if I had the choice I would have taken a second broken clavicle then what my little girl is now facing. She is receiving only occupational therapy even though her ped said that she wanted both PT and OT. She is 5 months old and she can move her fingers but she leaves her elbow up on her chest most of the time. And I have been noticing a lot of pops that are loud when we go and move her arm. I am not receiving very good care at the moment for her because I am in Alaska. But I am taking her back down to Florida where I know that there are specialists who can see her and find out what we can do to make her stronger. I am so worried about her. The hardest part for me is that she is the youngest of my 4 and they are 2 , 1 and then my 5 month old and my 10 yr old. I think the dr should have had an ultrasound done the day before she was born to check her size because I personally think that the hospital was wrong telling me that at 36 weeks she was only weighing 6 lbs and my previous ultrasound they were measuring her over 8 lbs.
I have been tempted by the idea of trying to file a lawsuit for her because of her injury and according to Social Security she is disabled by there standards. But I just don't know if it is worth taking the effort to do for her. I can't wait to get back to Florida and start getting her treatment. I really hope that she will be able to completely recover since she has gotten barely any care of then a nerve test to check on her nerve conduction and seeing the ped and occupational therapy. The neurologist that seen her didn't specialize in children so that bothered me. She had that appointment to just check on her and give me piece of mind. I am hoping that we will be able to get her treatment started soon after I get back to Florida and finally on the right track. I don't want her to lag behind her siblings since they are all so close. I also don't want her to get the brunt of their sibling rivalry and her not be able to defend herself.
I have been tempted by the idea of trying to file a lawsuit for her because of her injury and according to Social Security she is disabled by there standards. But I just don't know if it is worth taking the effort to do for her. I can't wait to get back to Florida and start getting her treatment. I really hope that she will be able to completely recover since she has gotten barely any care of then a nerve test to check on her nerve conduction and seeing the ped and occupational therapy. The neurologist that seen her didn't specialize in children so that bothered me. She had that appointment to just check on her and give me piece of mind. I am hoping that we will be able to get her treatment started soon after I get back to Florida and finally on the right track. I don't want her to lag behind her siblings since they are all so close. I also don't want her to get the brunt of their sibling rivalry and her not be able to defend herself.
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Carolyn J
- Posts: 3424
- Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2004 1:22 pm
- Injury Description, Date, extent, surgical intervention etc: LOBPI. I am 77 yrs old and never had a name for my injuries until 2004 when I found UBPN at age 66.
My injuries are: LOBPI on upper body and Cerebrael Palsy on the lower left extremities. The only intervention I've had is a tendon transplant from my left leg to my left foot to enable flexing t age 24 in 1962. Before that, my foot would freeze without notice on the side when wearing heels AND I always did wear them at work "to fit in" I also stuttered until around age 18-19...just outgrew it...no therapy for it. Also suffered from very very low self esteem; severe Depression and Anxiety attacks started at menopause. I stuffed emotions and over-compensated in every thing I did to "fit in" and be "invisible". My injuries were Never addressed or talked about until age 66. I am a late bloomer!!!!!
I welcome any and all questions about "My Journey".
There is NO SUCH THING AS A DUMB QUESTION.
Sharing helps to Heal. HUGS do too. - Location: Tacoma WA
- Contact:
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
HOW are your children doing, Isys' Mom and Felicia's MOm?
...Gramma Carolyn cares...{self appointed
}
HUGS all around,
Carolyn J
...Gramma Carolyn cares...{self appointed
}HUGS all around,
Carolyn J
Carolyn J
Adult LOBPI
Adult LOBPI
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IsysMom
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Tue May 11, 2010 11:00 pm
- Injury Description, Date, extent, surgical intervention etc: My daughter who was born on March 25, 2010 has a brachail plexis injury to her left arm.
- Location: Bossier City, Louisiana
Re: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
An update on Isy. She is now two months and a week old and is lifting her arm (straight no elbow bent) a little bit up. I've seen her raise it once up completely. I was so excited. God is answering my prayers and I am so thankful. We are doing lots of weight bearing exercises now and still the range of motion exercises. I hope Felicia is doing better too.