The Boot Update

So, remember when I posted about the boot/night garment that was going to change our lives?  Well we got it a few days after the holidays aaaannnnnnnnndddddddd...

Yeah, wop wop.  Didn't fit.  The front part was about an inch shorter than the back part.  Luckily, Solaris is a pretty great company and they just made us another one.  They even let us keep the not-so-great-fitting one to use in the meantime.  We got the second one last week aaaaaannnnnnnnnddddddd...

I have no photo!  I am terrible, I know, but since the boot goes on at bedtime, photos are not usually at the forefront of my mind, sorry. Here's another view of the old one.  If I get a good picture of the new one I will update.  But, it does fit, Huzzah!

See how the front and back aren't even? 

The new one once has a sparkly mermaid decal on it instead of the butterfly that was on the old one.  In a true example of men vs. women, Daniel wasn't so keen on the mermaid, but I liked it.  Then we took Juniper to PT last week and our therapist exclaimed how much cooler the mermaid was than the other one.  I guess it's a girl thing.

I will include random cuteness to make up for lack of new boot pics

It has been pretty life changing, because it really is so much easier to velcro the boot on her at night than it is to wrap her, especially because she wants to move pretty much all the time these days, which makes wrapping her a total PITA really difficult.  I was completely sold on the boot until 4am last night the other night.  Juniper has been teething, and last night the other night was particularly bad, but when I was lying there, not sleeping, as Juniper pinched my cheek, I realized that her sleep has been pretty bad since we started using the boot.  I'm really hoping it is just coincidence, and we get a good night of sleep in with the boot on soon, so I don't have to admit that maybe there is a connection.  I can't imagine that it is less comfortable, but maybe it is just a matter of getting used to something new.

Her Christmas wagon is finally assembled.

One of the benefits to using the tribute that Solaris talks about is that the swelling is improved because of the consistency of the garment.  For instance, when I wrap Juniper the foam layer doesn't end up in exactly the same place, the wrapping isn't always the same tension, it may end higher or lower on her leg, or different parts of her leg and foot end up with more or fewer layers; there's just a lot of variables.   Juniper's leg has always been the smallest when we are consistent with her wrapping and massage.  If she is sick, or goes to sleep before we can wrap her, or gets cellulitis and we don't wrap her for a few days, it usually takes a week for the swelling to kind of normalize again.  The idea with the tribute is that it takes the consistency to another level because not only are you wearing it every day, but the leg is getting the same level of compression, in the same places, every time.  Her ankle looks way better than I have ever gotten it to look with just wrapping, and the top of her foot is looking better too.

So there's the boot update.  Since I wrote this Juniper has had some better sleep in the boot, and some not great sleep with her leg wrapped, so I think it's a who really knows situation.