Yesterday was therapy day. I had to pick Alex up from school early and have her to physical therapy at 1. Shannon started her PT session checking out the range in her legs. Still pretty much at a -12. If she REALLY stretches her out, she can get her right leg to -5 and left leg to -10. So not terrible, but not really where I was hoping she would be after all of that casting.
After her measurements were done we went to the 'cage' - (you can see images here - and we have this at home too) and Shannon placed her on her belly and hung weights off of the boots that were on her feet to stretch her legs. Alex was NOT a fan! This is what she looked like after three minutes.
It only took her a minute or two to regroup and smile again :)
After that exercise Shannon set her up to do some standing. This is the first time Alex has been set up to stand like this and she was intently watching the process.
I'm amazed at how many bungees, pads, belts and straps it takes to get her to stand up straight.
And even after all that Alex still found a way to twist her legs so Shannon had to put a mini basketball between her legs!
This is one of the set-ups Shannon would like us to use at home and I made several jokes and wise cracks about what Alex is going to wind up looking like if she thinks that I can set all this up exactly the way it should be. Alex will likely be hanging from the ceiling :) I took lots of pictures so I can try and figure it out. Stay tuned :)
One of Alex's favorite noise is 'kissy sounds' - so anytime we want to engage her or try and make her smile if she's frustrated is to make the kiss sound....here Shannon's getting her lip work out while Alex is getting her leg work out.
Shannon ended the session with her with a dance :)
After we left physical therapy we had to head over to speech therapy. Alex has been in speech therapy since she was about a year old. And you might remember I just blogged last week about how she totally rocked her speech session. I guess her therapist didn't think so because when I walked in she started talking about how Alex had been working on the same goals for quite a long time now (which has been about the last year and half since she started working with this therapist) and the basic gist of the conversation was that she didn't feel like Alex was making that much progress and that she couldn't do anything else for Alex so we were being discharged. At first I was on the defensive and then I just started getting mad. Anytime Alex has gotten to a stand still or didn't make progress in an area different goals were created for her. If one method of communication didn't seem to be working, something new was tried. Her plan of care had not been updated in years so I was mad that instead of changing her plan, the decision was ultimately made to just dismiss her. I've always learned neat things from her therapy sessions and different ways to present things to her - or have found a toy or book that a therapist used that really motivated her so I've always found her therapies to be very helpful. Believe me, if I didn't, or I didn't think she was getting anything out of it, I wouldn't juggle all of the therapies on top of the thousand other things we have to do. I didn't even stay for her session yesterday - I left after that conversation. What was the point of staying? I can't believe I haven't blogged about it before now, but we have been implementing a new communication style with Alex called PODD. I think we'll take a little break and get back into a school schedule and routine and then I'll work on finding a therapist that is trained in PODD and see where we go from there. For right now I'm focused on getting her cage hook up right so she's not all tied up upside down :)
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