Horsey Horsey

ne of Dominic's favorite things to do is go over and visit our friend Carol's horse, Raven.

Here're some pictures. I have a video but it errored out while uploaded....







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first OT appointment

We did whats call the Willbarger Protocol, which will take some getting used to for Dominic but overall i've heard wonderful things about it. We'll be doing it 4-5 times a day for 3 weeks and then as needed to soothe him.

Then he got to play in a swing that hung from a pivoting hook in the ceiling. Sensory kids apparently have a miswiring between their vestibular system and their visual system - what the OT said was that when you spin them in circles, they should get dizzy, and we should see his eyes doing a REM type movement for a few minutes immediately after spinning. WE do not, which is very common for sensory kids, and the goal is to keep spinning him one direction /stop / other direction / stop as often as possible to get his brain USED to working like that.

its fascinating stuff.

Tomorrow Rod takes him for speech therapy.

Pediatrician appt followup

CT scan showed no issues.
ABR - nothing we didn't know already, but Dr Maynard deferred to Dr Shaw (the ENT) who we see 7-8

the MRI conversation went like this:

Joy: given that every professional who has interacted with dominic in a play setting has told us that he's just a puzzle, i'd really like you to do an MRI just to rule out any physical damange

Dr M: We might be to the point of an MRI. Lets do speech therapy for a year and then get an MRI.

Joy: I'm going to ask for you to order the MRI now, I don't want to wait. I don't do well with the unknown.

Dr. M: Okay, well. I guess. My nurse will set it up.


I am being humored. And that is fine with me.

ST and OT parent conference eval notes

Here're tidbits from the ST and OT parent conference we had today, the "standardized testing" that they did, their impressions, etc. We got in the OT and ST both once next week, and then twice a week starting in July.

Lots of big scary words. The case coordinator is the OT who evaluated him and who will be providing his therapy. When we told her that the hearing turned out to be conductive and only in one ear she mentioned that the vestibular system is managed in the inner ear, and if maybe ONE ear has damage / fluid buildup / etc, that could cause many of the things we were seeing. We mentioned the potential of brain injury from the flu and she encouraged us to proceed with finding that out.

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Diagnosis:
Receptive/Expressive Language Disorder
Motor Incoordination

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OT stuff:
Low-Normal Muscle tone in trunk and upper extremities
good spinal posture
bilateral joint laxity in his hands
Fair midline crossing
He has higher functioning visual motor skills, but foundation skills such as imitation are greatly impacting success
Limited attention to fine motor skills

Then based on the survey we filled out "Dominic is demonstrating a "definate difference" from his peers in the are of multisensory processing. he is also noted to be the "probable difference" classification in the areas of auditory processing, vestibular process and touch processing. This appears to be impacting him the areas of emotional reactivity, inattention / distractability,and sedentary play. he is noted to be a seeker of sensory imput"

Recommended - 6-12 months of OT (we'll be going 2x a week thru the rest of this calendar year,and then once a week based on insurance rules)

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ST stuff

Testing indicated language skills in the severe range.
He uses primarily jargon with occasional real words.
Unable to answer yes/no questions.
Does engage in eye contact and follows directiosn.
Displays echolalic speech.
verall receptive and expressive speech are severely delayed.

Recommendation - miminum 1 year ST (we'll be going 2x a week thru the rest of the calendar year and then once a week, based on insurance rules)

back from the abr

boy that was a long day... we're back, he did fine w/the anesthesia, but the 10min that he was in the CT scan were the longest 10 minutes of my life. We got to be in with him during the ABr.

We won't get the results until our Doc appt on june 23. unofifiicially, the audiologist administering the ABR said that she thinks there's a mild loss in the lower frequencies in his left ear that is Conductive (as opposed to sensori neural). Very mild. Who knows what that really means, it may mean that we look at tubes. this does not match the first screen where they thought the loss was the in upper frequencies, so thats kind of confusing.

onwards, i guess. next week we meet w/the ST and OT and set the therapies schedule.

whoops.

Yeah, we missed our appointment today because I thought it was at 4pm... it was at 3:30. We're rescheduled for june 17. Not a big deal anyway, because the place still has to do insurance work before we'd be able to start. so they're going to get started on that.

Also, we are postponing our trip to Boulder. We'll try to do that later in the summer. Too much all at once.

Quickie update

- Couldn’t get a neurologist appointment. Apparently Neurologists only see people when regular doctors ask them to. Regardless, the whole virus-eating-synapse theory is making more and more sense.

- Dominic’s actually responding to the detox foot pads. They’re coming off all gross in the morning, but I’m seeing some improvements in speech. The babbling is noticeably clearer, and there’s a few more spontaneous real words. This is shocking because the herbal stuff is all we’re actually doing right now, the ST and OT haven’t started.

- I’ve begun added Epsom salts to his bath, and am slathering him in Magnesium gel after the bath. The Epsom salts detox the body, and the Magnesium replenishes one of the major minerals that does “connections” for the body. We’re going to go over to Christie’s and have her muscle test him for a few other things this afternoon, see if we can’t get a faster response in rebuilding connections.


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Edited to add, we just saw Christie, and she muscle tested Dominic for an antiviral herb that specifically pulls virus's out of organs (i'm forgetting the name), for skullcap (that helps rebuild the mylethin sheath of the brains synapses) both of which he tested postitive to use, and then also for magnesium (came back negative), VSC (a viral support compound, also came back negative). She'll have the herbs on Thursday, and at that point we'll re-test on the stuff he's taking right now and see if we can stop those.

Also, the neurologists nurse called me back and after talking with me still said that this Dr. will not take Dominic because he's only doing seizure patients so thats a definate no there. She did give me the name of someone else but recommended we do some speech therapy and then followup with the pediatrician.

houdini incarnate

So, dominic figured out a few months ago how to unlock both locks on the FRONT screen door, and we decided to install a hook and eye up high enough that he couldn't reach it.

he's been watching intently.

today, Rod caught him dragging a chair over and actually operating the hook and eye. When asked WHAT ARE YOU DOING, he got a very guilty expression on his fac. *great*

Houdini incarnate, i SWEAR