Last Therapy & A Doctor Visit

Ryder had his very last Occupational Therapy visit at Children’s Hospital today :(  I can’t believe it has been 90 days already!  Ryder has had a pretty high fever all week so I didn’t have him participate in therapy today, we just went to say bye to his OT and tell her thank you for everything she has done for us.  She bought Ryder a balloon ball, which he was pretty excited about, and she gave him one last lollipop to remember her by.  The first time she gave him a lollipop I cringed, but once I saw how it made him sit still so she could get a good stretch of his arm, hand, and fingers, I joined Team Lollipop each week.  And today he got his last one, it was sad, I was choked up.  Mainly because we all know that Ryder is not ready to be leaving therapy.  ESPECIALLY not Occupational therapy, where they focus mainly on his left arm and hand.  I asked her to print me his evaluations and notes from each session so that I could have them for his records (secretly I wanted to read through them and see how much progress he has made, AND give them to the Pediatrician to see if she could come up with a new diagnoses to get him more OT).  Reading through the notes tonight had me a little upset again because it is extremely apparent that he needs therapy on his arm, he’s not showing major improvement in that area, hardly any at all to be truthful.  I can’t believe that the insurance company is okay with the fact that there is a 1 yr old who cannot use one of his hands but is not being allowed any further therapy.  My mind just cannot wrap around that concept.  I would say that we are still hopeful that Medicaid is going to pull through for us…but that’s not looking too good either.  Children’s is holding our appointment for 6 weeks though, so if Medicaid does come through we’ll get our same appt and same therapist back without having to start the process all over.  The people from Early Intervention did call last week though and ask if we would be interested in having his old OT come back out since our insurance benefit was ending.  As badly as I wanted to scream not-so-nice words through the phone and tell them I didn’t NEED them after they dropped Ryder’s treatment and upset me, I bit my tongue and humbly accepted.  The fact is that Ryder needs therapy, and I need people to have his best interest in mind, including ME…no pride allowed.  So hopefully starting sometime soon he will have OT once a week in our home again.  It’s better than nothing!  We still have a few weeks of PT at Children’s and Jelena is working her magic on getting us more and more and more of that!  (Please pray that it goes through…I just found out that the Podiatrist is out of our network so they are denying our claim for going to see him…of course…I just hope they will accept his script for more therapy and not give me a hard time about it.)  Sorry for rambling, I feel like when I post about Ryder’s medical stuff I go on an information overload, but I guess that’s because this is what it’s like.  Some new battle every day, we win some and lose a lot, but we’ll keep fighting, whatever it takes.

Ryder with Miss Karen on his last day of OT at Children’s

Our next stop was to the Pediatrician to get Ryder checked out.  He woke up Tuesday morning with a fever, but I wanted to wait it out because he had no other symptoms.  Each day he kept waking up with a fever and not eating a lot, so finally today I made him an appointment.  Thank God I did because by the time we got there, his fever had gone up to 104.5!!!  I tried not to panic and told the nurse to get him some tylenol ASAP.  He tested positive for Strep Throat, again!!  If you’re counting, this is the 3rd time he has had it, in fact every time he has been sick it has been strep!  I guess having that IgA deficiency in his blood is showing its true colors now, this is what it’s going to be like.  He’s going to have a hard time fighting off any germs that he comes in contact with.  Luckily he responds great to treatment, so once we get him on medicine he’s back to his old self in no time!  So, Ryder ended his week on a rough note…but it was nothing that a visit from Uncle G:

A slurpee:

And some Penicillin won’t fix!