Wednesday, September 9, 2009

First Physical Therapy Session


We ended up deciding to go with the Early Intervention Program for all of Shelby's therapies. They are great--very family centered and it is all done at our house. I think that Shelby will really benefit from doing physical and occupational therapy in her natural environment.

Yesterday, our service coordinator (Molly) and the physical therapist (Beth) came out for the first session of PT. I don't think it could have gone any better. When they did her developmental evaluation at the beginning of August, she had some asymmetry. That has completely gone away. Beth was thoroughly impressed with Shelby's strength and coordination. She is holding her head up very well and doing great on her tummy! Also she can roll from her tummy to her back. In fact, Shelby is ahead of where most 3-month-olds are developmentally. Beth gave us a list of things to start working on--exercises that she would usually assign a 4-month-old. Shelby's just advanced like that. :)




One of my biggest worries lately has been that Shelby will get behind physically because of her cortical blindness. I've been wondering what will motivate her to roll over, crawl or walk if she can't see things that she is curious about and wants to examine more closely. It will be Beth and the occupational therapist's job to help us with this. Also, Molly is begining the process of referring us to the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in NC. They are based in Raleigh, but have satellite programs all over the state for younger children. I'm not yet sure what their role will be, but apparently they will come out to our house also.

In the mean time, we will be doing PT every two weeks, and starting occupational therapy soon. We also have a few different functional visual assesments coming up soon. These will be done by Shelby's opthamologist and the Governor Morehead folks and I hope that they will tell us that Shelby has some vision.

1 comment:

  1. It sounds like she is doing great!

    I am sure that the school for the blind will be a wonderful resource and have many ideas on how to encourage Shelby to explore the world around her.

    She is so beautiful!

    ReplyDelete