Yesterday I got a call from Casey’s soon-to-be OT with the school district. She had a last minute opening and was able to come by this morning to meet Casey and shadow Casey with her current OT. The new OT seems really nice and has lots of ideas of stuff that she wants to work on with Casey. She had some adapted toys in her car and brought one in for Casey to try out. I am sure everyone has seen the little dogs, pigs, cows, etc that are usually in little fenced in areas in the mall. They are stuffed and make noises and move around. I think the pig does flips the dog barks and sits up. They have been around forever. Anyway, she brought in the dog adapted to work with a switch. So instead of turning it on or off like the ones you see in toy stores this one plugs into the switch and when Casey activates the switch the dog does it thing until Casey releases. She seemed to really like it. She would hold down the switch for a long time and watch the dog do his thing. I think the rest of us in the room were ready for a break, but not Casey. What ever makes her happy.
Casey’s current OT fitted her for new hand splints today. When Casey was itty bitty (NICU days) she had little splints that held her fingers open. Then as she became a little less white knuckled we started using thumb splints instead. The thumb splints do not do anything for the fingers, and the finger splints did nothing for the thumb. The splints that Casey was fitted for today are specially made to open up her thumb and fingers. It is the same material as her thumb splints, there is just a lot more of it. It would be som nice if she could get her hands open enough to start to grab things a little better. Time will tell I guess.
I found out that Casey’s nurse has actually worked with the new OT with one of her previous patients. It’s always nice to have an established relationship already in place. We are one step closer to being transitioned. I am going to be sad not to see all Casey’s friends from ECI each week.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks we should have her soon-to-be PT come by. Then we will have the ARD meeting. After the ARD meeting it is pretty much just finishing up paperwork to get her enrolled then setting up the new schedule. It is so crazy that she is 3 in just over a month. Where has the time gone?!