Gratitude

When you have a child with a long history of medical issues, you learn to be grateful for things you wouldn't ordinarily think about. Eating? I'm grateful....my daughter, A, didn't eat for years and used a feeding tube until she was 3 years old. Walking? I'm grateful...my daughter didn't walk until she was 3 1/2. And today I'm grateful for a sprained ankle.

Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from my daughter's deaf/hard-of-hearing therapist. She was really concerned about A. She observed her at school to be off-balance (even more so than usual), seemingly unsure of where to step when she walked, and was not writing her name correctly, with the letters in the right order. As she relayed all this to me, I grew more and more concerned; I, too, had noticed yesterday morning that she wasn't walking quite right, but chalked it up to her possibly being tired. And when I volunteered in her classroom yesterday, I witnessed her not writing her name correctly, too.

The therapist was concerned that A had possibly suffered a concussion. This was not a far-fetched theory; she had been pushed down by a little boy on Monday, 4 days earlier, and in fact had a cut and gooseegg on her forehead. (This same little boy has been pushing her a lot recently. It's not aggressive; rather, he has a crush on her and keeps running over to hug her. But she has balance issues and keeps getting pushed over. It's gotten to the point where the principal is involved, and the little boy is being put in a different recess than A). The therapist also suggested that maybe A had had a seizure in her sleep; this frightened me, as A has never had a seizure before.

Needless to say, hung up and had A walk over to me. She was indeed walking funny, something I hadn't noticed earlier because she hadn't been walking far. I had her write her name a few times, and each time she got it right. I was not concerned about this now, but I was concerned about the walking issue. I called our pediatrician, who told us to go straight to the emergency room at Children's Hospital.

The whole drive there I was freaking out. What if A had suffered a concussion? What could they do about it at that point? And what if it was a seizure? I know this is a large leap to make, but given her medical history, and the fact that she had a bilateral pre-natal stroke, it wouldn't be unheard of. On the other hand, I was able to talk myself down from the ledge; her writing was ok, and over the past few days she had exhibited no unusual behavior (aside from the odd walking)...her eating, sleeping, and personality was unchanged.

The doctors at Children's Hospital did not think it was a concussion, based on observation and examination. However, when they looked at her legs, they noticed one ankle was swollen! She ended up having some x-rays done on her ankle, which luckily turned out normal. Most likely she sprained or strained her ankle, which would of course account for her walking oddly! One thing that worries me is the fact that she didn't tell me she was in pain! Never in the past week did she indicate, either verbally or non-verbally, that her ankle hurt. She is definitely a little trooper, but I wish she would be less so sometimes.

So, I am grateful. A sprain/strain? That is easily healed. We are keeping her off her feet as much as possible; of course she's walking some, but she is sitting out of adapted P.E. and is playing in the sandbox at recess. And at home, of course, I'm carrying her around like a princess as much as I can. In light of what I thought it COULD be, this is nothing. A concussion? A seizure? A broken ankle? Bring THIS on. We can deal.

Hooray for Kindergarten!

I just realized I haven't written anything about how my daughter is doing in kindergarten! Usually my blog is half about my family and half about racing; however, these past 6 weeks or so I've been so focused on my races. In the past few weeks, I've completed two triathlons (a sprint and an Olympic distance) and a half marathon and I've completely neglected to write about the part of Grateful Mama's life that makes me a Mama!

My daughter, A, started kindergarten at the end of August. As I wrote on her first day of school, she is in the first of a two-year kindergarten. My school district offers this two-year kindergarten to children who were born in June through November, who would otherwise be the youngest kids in the class. This is not a special ed class; it's 100% mainstream, with all typically-developing kids. Most of the kids in there, including my daughter, can benefit from the extra year in order to develop more social, language and other developmental skills. Although she is in a mainstream class, she does get pulled out for 5 different therapies during the week (30 minutes of physical therapy, 30 minutes of speech therapy, 30 minutes of occupational therapy, 60 minutes of deaf/hard-of-hearing therapy, and 60 minutes of adapted P.E.). I'm so happy that they are giving her all of her services even without being in a special ed class.

School has now been in session for seven weeks. My son, D, is doing great in second grade, as I expected. But my daughter? She's thriving!

• Academically she is exploding. She went to school being able to read a few 3-letter word here or there. Today she can read most 3-letter words without help. She can even spell! We have lots of magnetic letters on our refrigerator that she loves to play with. I can ask her to spell a 3-letter word, like "hat" or "fox" or "bed" and 9/10 times she gets the correct letters and spells the word! Today she came home from school being able to read the words "the", "my" and "see". Being as she is only 7 weeks into her first year of kindergarten, I am very hopeful that she will be a good reader one day.
• On the potty training front, she is mostly trained. I wrote in mid-July that she wasn't potty trained at all. Soon after that, she started to get it. Now, she is accident-free most days, although there are a few days here and there that she comes home from school in new shorts and underwear (I keep a backpack of extra clothes for her in the health aide's office). She also sometimes has accidents at home. But I know many kids in kindergarten have accidents at school, so I'm not worried; I mean, she only trained two months ago!
  
• She has friends! She seems to be well-liked in the class (as she always was in preschool, too) and has a little group of friends. I've even heard kids say "Oh, there's A, let's go play with her" while we're on the playground in the morning before the bell rings. My heart melts each time I see her walking hand-in-hand with a friend. Of course, her language seems to be way below that of most (but not all) of her peers, but she's obviously able to keep up with them.
• She is getting a bit better with writing some letters and using scissors. This will be an ongoing struggle for her, particularly with her vision issues.
• She is getting so independent! She's been wanting to pick out her own clothes and get dressed by herself; help set the table; help unload the dishwasher; and assist me with various other household chores.

All in all, I have seen HUGE progress over the last few months with A. Of course, her whole life has been one big leap of progress, but I'm seeing more and more subtle, yet important, milestones these days. I couldn't be prouder.

Amazing Progress in OT

I wrote back in August about taking A in for an occupational therapy (OT) evaluation at Children's Hospital. Although she had been discharged from OT the year before (she had been seen primarily for eating, and once she figured that out we were discharged) I had concerns about her writing skills. Or, rather, her lack of writing skills. She couldn't copy a circle or a line, color anything other than a scribble, and had no scissor skills. Her other fine motor skills were good; it was the writing I was concerned about. At age 4, these were skills I felt she needed. After all, next year she would theoretically be going to kindergarten (although I am holding her back a year and enrolling her in pre-K) and kindergarteners need to be able to write. To do that, they first need basic skills such as drawing lines and circles.

After having the evaluation in August, it took some time to actually get scheduled with a therapist. Our schedule is very tight, and I needed to wait until a slot opened that I could actually get to. Once school started in September, I also asked for an OT evaluation through our school district. (We also get speech therapy and physical therapy in both locations. It's nice to have good private insurance and an amazing school district. We're very lucky). Last week we had the IEP with the school OT, and services will start the week after Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, we've now had 4 sessions with the OT at Children's Hospital. I have seen such an improvement in the past month; it has been unreal. Last week in OT she connected some dots with a (decent) straight line; drew some nice circles; and completed a half drawn square. One month ago she couldn't do any of that. Seriously.

Today I when I picked A up from preschool, she had a Thanksgiving card for me. It was the usual preschool card, with her handprint made into a turkey.

However, this one had her name on it.

She had written 3 letters of her name.

Without help. Or copying. Or tracing.

The only prompt the teacher gave was "write your name".

And she did.

We haven't even PRACTICED writing letters yet. Only shapes.

Yes, I think occupational therapy is going to be WONDERFUL!