Therapy update

Here's a general overview of where Matt is in his therapies and how he spends his days.

Physical therapy: He's walking every day with a quad cane and a belt that the therapist can hold onto in case he tips, but this rarely happens. Every once in awhile his right toe will catch on the floor as he's swinging his leg forward, but he can usually tell and corrects his balance. This morning he went up & down the stairs pretty quickly and figured out how to keep his right toes from catching on the lip of the steps. His therapist also got him on an exercise bike for 5 minutes, hoping to do this regularly and increase the time as his strength & endurance increases. In his afternoon session, he walked up and down the hallway, which is quite the obstacle course here with all the wheelchairs and lifts parked in the way. Then she had him stop at a spring-loaded door and figure out how to get in and out of the room with just one functioning arm that needs to hold a cane. His motor planning still amazes everyone he works with.

Occupational therapy: OT covers a lot of different things, so he has one full hour of OT each day. When they were doing 2-30 minute sessions, they would just get going and it would be time to stop, so this is working much better for him. Sometimes he'll work in his room and his therapist will help him with ADLs (activities of daily living) like how to dress himself, brush his teeth, and transfer to and from his wheelchair independently. Today they did some electric stimulation on his right arm which is sometimes paired with mirror therapy. He puts his right arm inside a tube that has a mirror on the outside. Then he moves his left arm and watches the reflection in the mirror which makes his brain think he's moving his right arm. Its crazy to watch and it seems to be making some muscles engage in his right arm, but it is a really hard workout for Matt, so they never do it for very long. He also spends part of every session working on his vision - they're really trying to get his eyes to work together, but his eyes are just not cooperating.

Speech therapy: This is definitely the area in which Matt struggles the most. He really likes his therapist, but he's usually not that excited about going to speech. He has to work so hard and it really wipes him out, so its better when he has 2 short sessions - one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but sometimes he'll have 45 minutes - 1 hour straight and that just ruins him for the rest of the day. Recently, they've started laying out 15 words and then showing Matt the corresponding pictures and he can point out the right word every time, and mostly read the words correctly, too. This has been kind of a breakthrough and something they're going to expand on for use outside of therapy sessions. We might get a program loaded onto our laptop that will have tabs full of common words Matt needs to access and then he can just point to them. If that doesn't work, we'll make boards or a book full of different pages of words. Either way, I think its going to make a huge difference in the amount of frustration he deals with when trying to communicate.

Therapeutic recreation: Once a week, Matt with have TR and so far, we've been going bowling. Basically, this session is a way to incorporate all of his therapies into a hobby or activity that Matt enjoys. He has to figure out how to get to the lanes, how to make everything work, and how to count pins. Hopefully he will be able to stand and bowl soon, without having to work around his wheelchair. He could do other things in TR like bike, cook, or swim, but so far he seems pretty happy with bowling.