Eye Gaze Appointment

I think, overall, the appointment with the vendor for the eye gaze communication system went well.  There were a total of 10 people in the room, and it was in a different room that Alex normally has therapy in, so she was quite distracted, to say the least.  The vendor was trying to calibrate her eyes to the system, but all Alex wanted to do was look at him...she was staring and smiling at him almost the whole time like "hey, who are you?!?".  The vendor actually used Aaron's eyes to calibrate the machine - because they have the same genetics and the same eye color, the calibration would be really close, not necessarily 100% accurate, but close enough.  When we tried to get her to continually focus on the machine she would get distracted by someone opening the door, or talking, or Aaron or the rain stick they were shaking at the system to get her attention, so that was really the only frustrating part.  I really wanted to take pictures and post what the system looks like, but the vendor said the flash from my camera would screw up the cameras on the system that were tracking Alex's eyes.  Overall, the potential with this system is amazing.  So, the plan for right now is that the vendor is going to get a loaner system to Children's Hospital in about 4 weeks.  At that time we are going to bump Alex's speech therapy up to 2-3 visits a week to get her used to the system.  If she makes significant enough progress, which we believe she will, a letter of medical necessity will be written for Medicaid to get her a loaner system that we can use at home.  After the trial period, if we can prove she can use it, a system will be purchased. 

The vendor told me he had worked with a lot of kids like Alex and that practice, practice, practice is going to be the key to her success.  He told me he never guarantees the system will work for kids like Alex, but that he thought it would.  He stressed that is a whole new learning process for her and we have to get her to understand how the system works, and that really it is a learned skill that is just going to take time for her to develop.   So overall, this is going to take a huge time commitment on every one's part, we all have to continue to work with the pictures we are working with at home and school to continually get her to understand the cause and effect that if I look at "X", "X" will happen.  I am confident that she can do this.  She has been 100% accurate with the picture system we are using at home.  I think once we have all the pictures of the things that truly motivate her loaded into the machine, which we will be able to do with the loaner system, that she will get it.  Anytime we introduce something new it just takes her a while to 'get it'. I am 100% committed to this process, I am determined to do whatever it takes to help her master this - the end result, her being able to communicate with us, is just to important to us as a family.  Last night I was thinking about all of the possibilities the system can offer and all of the ways I can reward her and what new pictures I need to take.  Then I thought about taking pictures of all of us and the thought of potentially loading a picture of me, or Aaron, or Zach, or any family member for that matter and having the system say "I love you" for her literally brought me to tears.  So yes, we WILL make this happen!