GF. Strong!!!

We are at GF Strong!!!  We arrived a week ago, and James is doing awesome!  What an amazing place!  We are staying at Easter seals house which is less than a block and a half away.  Another bonus is that Safeway is just across the street too.  There is no way I would drive in Vancouver,  so Mark dropped us off and he went home to take care of things on the home front.  There has been some growing pains at Easter seals house.  I so miss the staff at Jeneece place!  What a blessing Jeneece place is to families at Victoria general hospital!  However,  we are lucky that they will let us stay here the whole time that James attends Gf strong.  It is so convenient to be so close to Gf strong.

During the first week of therapy the therapists unanimously decided that James would benefit from 8 weeks of therapy,  so we are here for 8 weeks!  

James' schedule starts at 9 am and right now he finishes therapies at 2 pm.  He worked so hard in physio today!  He is watching Star Wars movies in his room right now.  In physio he did 10 minutes on the stationary bike,  and then 8 minutes on the treadmill. Then he did a few minutes on the hand bike thing. It is basically pedals for your hands and arms.  He had a hard time finishing the last couple of minutes on the treadmill,  but he pushed on and finished!  I have noticed a difference in his gait with his left leg already now.  His knee is hyper extending much less.  Although it gets bad when he is tired.

Today he had an appointment with the physiatrist,  Dr. Yeo.  She is lovely.  She will be seeing if a Neuro Opthomologist will see him and properly assess his eye site.  She is also thinking that some more Botox may be positive for his right arm.  She is going to ask for his MRI to be sent from Victoria general hospital too,  and she will go over it with us.

Speech therapy is going good too.  He is already showing a tiny bit of improvement in some sounds.  I have noticed that a few times he has been able to make a t sound without plugging his nose.  They are working on getting his m sounds a bit crisper too.   The speech therapist is going to come with us to an appointment at the ear nose and throat specialist on Wednesday too.  They are going to scope James' vocal chords.  There is some concern that there may be some damage to his chords.  We are hoping that the doctor will have some suggestions that might help with his pronunciation and effort with his speech.

James has also been spending some time with the psychology team.  They are doing a thorough Neuro psychological assessment.  I am hoping that we will have a better idea of his strengths and weaknesses,  and whether he can be on his own during the day at all or not.

James' Occupational therapist is amazing.  Unfortunately he is away on vacation until September now . So he has another OT filling in.  Morio,  his original OT has a lot of training around movement,  and he did some amazing stuff with James right arm last week.  He has another therapist,  Carly , right now.  She is working on some changes to James chair and a splint for his right hand.  I have discovered that James has outgrown his seating.  The seat and the back have too much support for him and are actually hindering his progress!