Amaya's Journey with PFFD: Six weeks

It's been six weeks since Amaya had her surgery. It's pretty amazing, crazy and somewhat unbelievable. It's hard to believe how much has happened in such a short time, yet hard to believe that we still have such a long road ahead of us. It's pretty amazing to look back at all we've been thru as a family, and humbling to realize that we've also had moments of weakness, stress, and feeling overwhelmed. It's amazing to see all that Amaya has accomplished in such a short time. I'm daily impressed by her strength, courage, tenacity, and determination.
I talked with Amaya letting her know how great we all think she's doing. I let her know that Dr.Nelson was proud of her for how hard she's working at physical therapy. She asked if others didn't. I told her that sometimes, some people don't want to or complain a lot. But, praised her that she doesn't do that. She said, "I just do it, cause I wanna get thru this." There's that determination at work. She told me she was a bit nervous to walk on her left leg, but when she had to go to the bathroom she did it. No hesitation, no whining, just did it. She said, "It feels good to walk normal. It feels good to have full weight. It actually feels good." She had the biggest smile across her face.
Before we left for therapy she was complaining of a lot of knee pain. After breakfast I gave her some Tylenol. Lately she's been going long periods without pain medication. We give her the children's Tylenol during the day and the Tylenol w/codeine before bed. she's only been having one or two doses of medication on a daily basis. When we got to therapy Kim noticed that Amaya was in pain. Amaya told her her pain was at a seven. We updated Kim and Melissa on our appointment with Dr. Nelson and I showed them the x-ray from yesterday. Melissa said she was impressed with how much bone Amaya has gained and that the new bone looked so good. She said it was one of the best x-ray's she's seen. Melissa asked Amaya if she wanted to ride the bike and Amaya said yes. She walked to the bike (while Kim helped support her) then got on. They had to help her maneuver her legs around the bike. Melissa told Amaya that the first ten pedals would be the hardest. And they were. Amaya grimaced in pain, grunted, but kept going. I could tell by her face that it hurt, but was so happy to see her press on. Melissa helped pull the bike while Amaya pedaled. Once we got out into the hallway, Amaya started pedaling all by herself. She pedaled thru the adult gym and several people looked at her with big smiles on their faces.
As if that wasn't impressive enough then Amaya started walking. Kim helped support her as she walked in the gym. Melissa said that Amaya isn't putting her right leg forward enough because she's afraid to put her full weight on her left foot. When she's walking at home we need to work on that too. When they started to do the bends on her knee we were all curious if her numbers would get higher from all that work she did on the bike. She was able to get her knee bent to 110 degrees, which is great. The bike riding really helped. It worked her knee so much. Since stretching her knee is getting a bit harder Melissa suggested that we alter locking the bar during the day on Amaya's fixator (one day on one day off). On the way out Amaya walked thru the adult gym. Melissa had the wheelchair behind her in case she got tired, but she didn't want it, she kept going until she reached the end. She spotted Jeremy across the gym and got his attention to show him her progres. He was genuinely excited for her. It's nice to see the strong support and cheering section she has around her.