Just over a year ago, we did our first round of Constraint Induced Therapy with Ryder, where his good arm is casted for a 3 week period of time to encourage him to use his arm that lost function when he had his stroke. He cleverly named that cast “Sword Fight” because to him, he had his own personal sword attached. Knowing that our next round of CIT was approaching, we have been asking Ryder if he’s ready to get Sword Fight back on. If we were smart, we would not have carried the name over, because as soon as he got it on today he was swinging it around yelling Hi-Ya with a much bigger cast and much stronger,more powerful arm than we were up against last year!
When Daddy got home, he got the marker out and asked Ryder what he should write. Ryder said “Street Glide!”. So we will no longer be referring to his cast as Sword Fight, it is now Street Glide. We’re trying to encourage him to vroooom it along like a motorcycle instead of swinging it like a sword!
Friday mornings we have therapy at 7am (soooo early!) so today that meant getting casted at 7am. Ryder was a good sport, as he always is. He sat still, watching Blue’s Clue’s, asking questions, making us laugh, even stopping for a Hi-Five after the padding was on.
Once the cast was on, he tolerated it for all of I’d say…15 minutes, before he realized how much it SUCKS not having righty! Sorry, but it does. I know it sucks for him, and it sucks for me having to watch him struggle…no other word comes to mind. All we can do is try to help him succeed to gain the strength and confidence he needs with Lefty.
On the ride home he began panicking because he couldn’t see his fingers. He was really upset so I pulled over to comfort him and the only thing I could think to do was take a picture with the camera and show him that his fingers were in there and they were okay! He was fine after that.
We’ve been trying to do things with him today that don’t really require any fine motor skills, to keep him from getting even more frustrated. Like helping Daddy cut the grass! And watching his favorite shows!
He’s having to use Lefty now to pick up his drinks (had to go back to cups with handles to make it easy for him) and to feed himself. You can see in the picture above that he has associated movements, he lifts righty every time he drinks because his brain just doesn’t understand that Lefty is doing it.
I’ve been pretty amazed today watching him eat. If you can remember back to when we did the last casting, it took him almost the whole 3 weeks to be able to feed himself blueberries with lefty. Even though an entire year has gone by that he resorted back to doing everything with Righty, he immediately picked that skill back up today. If he’s picking up blueberries and feeding them to himself on day 1, I can’t wait to see what he’s capable of 3 weeks from now!
We couldn’t believe the size difference from his cast last year to the one this year! I don’t even remember his arm being that tiny only 1 year ago!
Miss Abby gave us homework, we had to fill up 2 bins with balls and for 20 minutes each day Ryder needs to stand there putting all of the balls from one bin to the next. I got the bins set up and hadn’t planned to put him to work today, but when he asked to “play” of course I wasn’t going to say no! He did SO good picking up each ball (or object) and getting it to the next bin.
Day 1 has definitely been a roller coaster. We had our moment in his room where we both just had to cry. This year is a little different because he’s asking real questions and expecting real answers. He’s starting to realize that something is different about him. We’re having conversations with him we haven’t had yet, nor had we prepared what we would even say when the time came. We’re just rolling with it though, he’s a smart boy and he’s also very brave, so I know he can handle all of this.
1 day down, lots more to go. Plan on seeing a lot of Street Glide around here in the weeks to come!
3 comments:
WOW! You all our such a strong and amazing family. Hang in there as you always do but cry if you need to like you already did! The difference in one year is amazing. Have a wonderful Mother's Day tomorrow Brandy, you deserve it!
Looks like he's doing great... definitely huge progress just from a year ago! Keep up the good work, ALL of you, and these 3 weeks will hopefully fly by and make a difference :).
What a difference a year makes, wow! Hang in there guys, in a month you'll be looking back on this whole experience..and I know Ryder will continue to grow stronger and appreciate all of this when he is older :) I'm sure you are told this all the time, but you guys are awesome parents!
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