{"id":8681,"date":"2021-03-12T13:26:55","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T02:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=8681"},"modified":"2021-03-12T13:49:51","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T02:49:51","slug":"henrys-working-so-hard-on-walking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/henrys-working-so-hard-on-walking\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry&#8217;s working so hard on walking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Words:<\/strong>\u00a0Brigid O\u2019Connell, Herald Sun<\/p>\n<p><strong>Photography:<\/strong>\u00a0David Caird, Herald Sun<\/p>\n<p><strong>To be able to put one foot in front of the other, Henry Bryant is learning to walk all over again.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But the four-year-old has proved at every hurdle he is up for the challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Henry is putting all his determination into intensive rehabilitation after complex spinal surgery to treat muscle tightness from cerebral palsy, that is aiming to see him pain free and moving more freely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis operation was all about giving him the therapies and interventions that he\u2019s going to have in the future, every opportunity to have their best result,\u201d said dad Shayne.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8692\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8692\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8692\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2021\/03\/Henry-Bryant-1-Herald-Sun-David-Caird-1-400x262.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"262\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2021\/03\/Henry-Bryant-1-Herald-Sun-David-Caird-1-400x262.jpg 400w, https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2021\/03\/Henry-Bryant-1-Herald-Sun-David-Caird-1-768x503.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2021\/03\/Henry-Bryant-1-Herald-Sun-David-Caird-1-800x524.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8692\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Henry Bryant, 4, zooms around the ward on a padded wheel board that helps him with his cerebral palsy. Picture: David Caird<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Traditional physiotherapy and Botox injections were only having minimal impact to reduce the stiffness in his legs. Recently he has been waking overnight in pain.<\/p>\n<p>This is how Henry reached the point of needing this surgery of last resort at The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n<p>Selective dorsal rhizotomy involves cutting some of the sensory nerve fibres that send abnormal signals from the leg muscles to the spinal cord. This frees up communication channels between the brain and muscles to improve mobility.<\/p>\n<p>In a two-year journey up to the procedure, Henry\u2019s temperament and mental health were assessed to see if he could cope with being bed-bound after surgery, the seven-week hospital stay, and the intensive rehabilitation that would follow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s a result of him seeing a lot of doctors, but not much flusters him,\u201d his sad said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe doesn\u2019t cry when he gets his immunisations \u2013 he\u2019s pretty resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is now taking multiple teams across the RCH to build him back up following last month\u2019s surgery. Henry has a strict schedule of rehabilitation, including exercises in his bed three times a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To be able to put one foot in front of the other, Henry Bryant is learning to walk all over again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971,7198,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-good-friday-appeal","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8681"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8695,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8681\/revisions\/8695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}