Love for Lefty

These videos might be a little painful to watch, but the only way to track our progress on this road to recovery is to see what areas we’re struggling in now and then hopefully be able to look back and see how far we’ve come.  Even now, to see him using his left hand is a huge victory considering that he never used to acknowledge that he had two hands.  So he went from completely ignoring lefty, to where we are today, and lets continue praying that the future holds a fully functioning left hand for Ryder!

This first video shows one of his major struggles which is Supination, or being able to turn his hand palm up.  I was so proud of him for voluntarily putting lefty under the water though, that’s a major improvement in itself!

 

In this second video you can see how hard it is for him to hold a round cup.  He gets really frustrated because he needs both hands to do it.  I always give him drinks out of cups with handles, so don’t worry, he’s not being tortured every time he’s thirsty, but I do realize how important it will be for him to gain this skill in the future so I try to work with him on it now.

 

And last…but certainly not least…this is what I call sticker therapy (yes that is made up).  I put stickers on his right arm which forces him to use his left hand to get them off.  I know this probably sounds like torture too, but when I first started doing it, his left hand was so uncoordinated that he couldn’t even get it to land where the sticker was.  Now, as you can see, he puts it right on the sticker but struggles because he has no pincer grasp and his fingers don’t work independently of each other.

 

You keep working hard Lefty, you have a huge team routing for you and watching you succeed!  We have lots of love for Lefty and are confident in your ability to overcome this.