Rolfing and hinged bar.........

[Guest guest]

Hi

Before I get to my question and something interesting I want to share, I just

thought I would give some background - more as catharsis for myself then because

you need to know it!

I am a British ex-pat living in Kenya as my husband works for a US NGO out here.

Our third child Toby was born out here with severe bi-lateral club feet 6 months

ago. After some initial poor management by someone who did not know what he was

doing (ending up with Toby having a huge pressure sore on his ankle and gangrene

in one leg at 4 weeks) not to mention a host of other issues we eventually found

a mission hospital (quite a journey away as it is at the bottom of the rift

valley) called CURE which is US based mission group which have set up

orthopaedic hospitals in about 5 developing countries to treat a number of

conditions including club foot. They follow ponsetti and we were doing great.

The only problem is that Toby is huge and so could only stay in casts up to a

week before circulation problems started which was problematic given the journey

(I gave up my job!). He had a tenotomy but we could not get the boots and bar

to stay on, so we went back into casts - in all he was in casts for 5 months.

The second attempt at the FAB failed (even following all the advice I got from

this list, and having some socks with the sticky pads couriered to me at great

expense!). So the hospital made their own AFOs for him (in black plastic as he

is the only white baby they see! - I'm often in the waiting room sat amongst a

host of Masai women with their kids strapped with cloth on their back all

smiling to themselves as I lug baby, car-seat, changing bag etc into the

treatment room!). The AFOs were only keeping his feet in neutral and they were

getting stiff. I then read about the problems with AFOs and we even managed to

get in a call to one of the doctors in Ponsetti's clinic in Iowa who said get

him back into casts and repeat the tenotomy in order to get the dorsiflexion we

needed for the boots. This was about two weeks ago and I was really down as we

have had such problems with the casts - he gets terrible heat rash and does not

sleep.

Anyway on a kind of whim I took him to see a lady who practices 'rolfing' out

here - it is a kind of deep massage where they break down connective tissue. By

the end of the first session we had at least 10 degrees of dorsiflexion and got

the boots on (that was a week ago) and then I took him again this week and she

did some work on the fatty tissue on the top of his feet and has visibly

lengthened them so that the boots fit even better. I wanted to know whether

anyone else has tried rolfing? it has worked well for me and he does not need to

go back into casts. I am going to do a few more sessions as she reckons she can

help the supination of his feet.

The other thing I wanted to ask was....someone and I can't find it now mentioned

that there is a hinged bar you can get to help when the baby is crawling. Toby

is not crawling yet, but as it takes me so long to get things sent out to Kenya

I thought I should start researching this now. Can anyone help with where I

might get this and let me know if it is of use? Also I have the Markell shoes

(as they were prepared to send them to us in Kenya) - will it work with them?

Thanks

Yolande