October 9, 2005
October 9, 2005 | Updates
Time for another update. Samuel had a pretty good week this week. He seems to be calm more often and he is definitely moving his arms more and more. He is even beginning to move them out away from his body which will give him a much better opportunity to grab at things in the future.We did go down to the NACD this week and had an interesting appointment there. We could not get Samuel to wake up for the appointment. In fact, we tried our best for the first 45 minutes of it. Then the founder of the academy came over and tried for about 5 minutes and got Samuel wide awake so he could assess him. We should receive instructions for his home therapy program sometime this week. It will be a pretty intense program, and we will probably need to ask for volunteers in the near future who would be willing to help out with the therapies. (Especially because our insurance has discontinued nearly all of the therapies they were sending for Samuel and this home program will be pretty much all he is getting.) We’ll let everyone know.
We also discussed with the NACD trying to get Samuel off as many of his medications as we can. He is still on so many that it would be difficult for his mind to function even if he didn’t have any damage to it. So we will be working on that over the next few months and see how clear we can get his head for him.
This morning, Samuel woke up with a cold. It hasn’t been too bad so far, and we hope it doesn’t get any worse. He will be more apt to get colds, RSV and pneumonia this year, so we are trying to make sure he isn’t around anyone who is sick. But this time of year, that’s a difficult thing to do.
We are also looking into getting Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatments for Samuel. Our insurance won’t pay for them, but they have helped near drowning victims in the past and we want to try it as soon as possible.
Samuel is needing to be cathed less and less. I don’t ever cath him during the days anymore, just at night. And 2 nights ago, he went on his own. Hopefully, that trend will increase.
Otherwise, all seems to be going well, just slowly. His feedings are getting better and better and he doesn’t seem to have stomach aches or constipation very often anymore. He is tracking things very well. And we are beginning to see signs that he can hear us as well. We also are certain that the movement of his arms is purposeful. And we are seeing him turn his head to the left more and more often. As I said, it’s all slow improvements, but we’re glad to see them.
Thanks again to everyone that’s been so good to help us. Hopefully, some of the new things we’ll be trying will help Samuel to progress even faster.
Love,
The Jewkes
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