Jacob's Journey with PFFD

Dr. Paley Update 2010

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:29:35 +0000

Dr. Paley is now head of the Paley Advanced Limb Lengthening Institute in West Palm Beach Florida.We will be traveling there for Jacob’s next limb lengthening early 20011. See links for more details.

Jacob’s Update 2010

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:18:58 +0000

Jacob is now 9 years old and loving life! He is enjoying the summer holidays and right now is visiting his grandparents with his sister Jess in San Diego. Jacob recently visited Hanger Prosthetics in Denver. Expert Orthotist James Feulner custom designed Jacob a new shoe lift. Jacob is due for his second limb lengthening procedure with Dr. Paley at the Limb Lengthening in Florida http://www.limblengtheningdoc.org/ February 2011. His discrepancy will be reduced by 3 inches so that his short leg will almost be touching the ground after the next lengthening. Meanwhile his new shoe lift is awesome!

Batman pays Jacob a visit!

Rachel — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:44:01 +0000

Wow October 2007 Batman arrives at the Hackerman Patz house in his Batman mobile to visit the kids. How cool is that! Jacob was so excited to meet Batman!

Update December 2007

Rachel — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:23:07 +0000

Jacob and Rachel flew to Baltimore on the 16th of December from Denver. Jacob had surgery the following morning to remove his fixator and a pin was placed at the top of his femur to stabilize it. Two hour later the surgery was a success and a removable cast was applied to Jacob’s leg. Dr. Paley gave us the thumbs up to return to Colorado the following morning just in time for Christmas. The cast is removable so that Jacob can shower which is very nice. We are all home as a family and enjoying the snow including sledding out our front door! The cast has to stay on until the 8th of January and then therapy starts again, slowly at first, to regain full movement of Jacob’s knee. Right now he is at 60 degrees and he will ultimately be at 100-110 degrees, by June 2008.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Colorado Katz Family! Jacob is wearing the cast under his pants and you wouldn’t even know it! The best present of all this year is a longer leg for Jacob! We thank God for blessing Jacob with a longer leg!

Update November 2007

Rachel — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:46:08 +0000

We all made it home after a four day road trip from Baltimore to Denver. Jacob is now back at school in first grade. Jacob attends in a wheel until the end of January. The kids at his school have been great! Jacob leaves school at 2:30pm so he can then attend physical therapy at Childrens Hospital Physical Therapy department in the afternoons. At therapy Jacob is regaining his full range of motion in relation to his left knee and hip. Jacob was at 42 degrees with his knee bends when we stopped lengthening and now he is at almost 55 degrees. This is awesome. He should regain about 5 degrees a month until his fixator comes off and then more rapidly after that. We just found out that Jacob will have his surgery to remove the fixator mid December and then he will NOT be able to weight bear at home or school for another month which would bring us up to the end of January. Physical therapy then continues to regain full movement of his knee and hip until June 2008. We are so proud of Jacob and we can all see a light at the end of the tunnel!

Update October 2007

Rachel — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:17:03 +0000

After four months of lengthening Jacob reached 3 inches of bone growth! We are now able to drive back across country to Denver as a family. Jacob’s fixator will still stay on for a month or so to allow the new bone to harden. We are excited to be going home!

Save a limb ride

Rachel — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:07:14 +0000

The 2007 Save-A-Limb Ride was just held in September. The ride is a fund raiser with the goal to save limbs from amputation and to preserve joints. To learn more about the event please click on the link Save-A-Limb Ride.

Rennaissance Festival Maryland

Rachel — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:40:19 +0000

We have approximately one month left in Baltimore to finish the lengthening. Jacob and Jessica and I are still here until we can re-unite with David and drive back across country to Denver, Colorado. This weekend the kids and I decided to go to the Maryland Renaissance Festival to do something fun and to take a break from the weekly hospital visits. The festival was awesome!

Pirate Jacob riding a pony.

Jessica and a baby medieval creature.

A knight on horse back riding in the jousting arena.

Fairie Princess Jessica

Pirate Jake

Fare maiden mamma.

Update September-Shoe Lift

Rachel — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:33:18 +0000

Today is a great day! Jacob was fitted for his very first shoe lift.

Jacob, Nurse Pam and Jessica are very happy.

Mom and physical therapist Kim are very proud. Jake has gained 5.5 cm and he will keep going with the lengthening to hopefully make it to 8cm.

Update August-Dr.Paley visit

Rachel — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:05:20 +0000

We just passed the half way point. Jacob saw Dr. Paley yesterday (shown below) and Dr. Paley measured 4.5 cm of new bone growth! That’s great news as Jacob is over half way towards our goal of 8cm.

Jacob is having some trouble with his knee bends. They seem to be the most difficult part of this whole process. The past few weeks his knee Range Of Motion (ROM) has been about 50 -55 degrees. If it drops below 45, we will have to stop lengthening. Dr. Paley has insisted that we get 65 to 70 by our next appointment in two weeks. Obviously, we don’t want to go home without achieving our goal of 3 inches, so we are working closely with th PT staff and have devised a plan that seems to be working. First, Jacob is on a sticker plan, where he earns stickers for varying degrees, like 60 would be 3 stickers. 25 stickers and he gets a cool toy, like an action figure. The other key to our success with knee bends seems to be “Return Of The Jedi” Jacob watches the movie right at the end when Luke defeats Vader, and the new death star is destroyed. It really motivates him, so who am I to argue with “Jedi.” Today Jake achieved sixty and we were thrilled, because if Jacob keeps it up, we won’t have to do knee bends twice a day. Believe me, it isn’t fun! I will upate soon on our knee bend progress!