I'm glad Friday is here. Only three more days and I will be heading to Fayetteville to see family, a much needed trip at this point since Christmas. Carsten will be headed down with me and then Chad will meet up with us on Thursday or Friday depending on when he gets out of class. Carsten is in music therapy right now shaking eggs and singing with the guitar with Ms. Kay:) He likes music therapy and it's fun for him anyway even if it's not the most research based therapy:)
I'm also learning about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. They have it at his physical therapy place. It's basically a huge chamber they get in and it delivers extra oxygen supposedly increasing blood flow and subsequently neurological function. I'm still not sure about it but the mom I spoke with this week said that her child has made lots of progress with it and intensive therapy combined. They go for 5 weeks at a time doing intensive PT and oxygen therapy. We never learned too much about either in school, I guess because it's more non traditional therapy. But her son has cerebral palsy and she said that is how he learned to walk. So, it's something I'm looking into. They gave me testimonials of two parents with children with Down Syndrome that had great results. They said that it increased their children's vocabulary a ton. I'm not sure how much of the progress was just natural development and how much can be contributed to the oxygen therapy. I think in Atlanta though we'll focus on the traditional therapies since Carsten will be a little older. We'll do PT, OT, Speech, and feeding therapy of course.
I can't wait for KKI to call and say they have an opening, it couldn't come sooner. He's doing so well and I think the program could really get him to a point where he's off the tube. I told Chad I don't care if they call on June 12th the day we're moving and say he's in, we're dropping everything and going! I know it will all work out timing wise so I'm not going to worry about it. Maybe we can get all settled in to Atlanta and then go, that would be perfect since Chad will be on a lot of TDY during this tour (travel). Well that's about it for me today, I know boring blog sorry:) I'll be sure to take some pictures of Carsten while we're in Fayetteville and post them!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Oh, I forgot!! March 21st is National Down Syndrome Day! Some people have started a campaign to eliminate the word "retarded" from our vocabulary. They were talking about it on KLove and basically they said that even though people don't say it with a derogatory demeanor that it still hurts families that have children with disabilities. I'll admit, I used that word all of my life until I had Carsten. Only then did I realize how much it does hurt. I'm getting better about not using it now and I think the campaign is a great idea. So everybody remember Down Syndrome on March 21st and try to get out and tell someone about it.
Happy Friday!
Love,
Momma Bridges
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