Therapy update

I know I haven't posted much about therapy lately. We're still going twice a week, and the actual content of her sessions stays about the same, although the intensity gradually increases.

I always walk in with Linda, and we do what we refer to as the choo choo. I stand behind Linda and walk in step behind her. We hold a cane in each hand. At first, I moved the canes so her hands moved correctly with respect to her feet, but now I try not to interfere at all. I just go where she goes.

We're not fast, but we slowly make our way down the hall and around a left turn. Linda will usually lose her balance once or twice on the way. I can tell immediately since I feel it in the canes. If she starts falling forward or to the side, I stiffen the canes so she can catch them. Otherwise, I try to let her catch her own balance--sometimes she does, and sometimes she falls backward (no big deal since I'm behind her).

Speech mostly works on her nasality. She does exercises to work on palate closure, like blowing bubbles with a straw in a cup of water (an activity that was my idea). And she does lots of words and phrases. Things like bee, bay, bye, bo, boo and dee, day, die, doh, doo. Or saying the same phrase as a statement and question, It's raining. It's raining?

Today I made a list of something very hard for Linda, differentiating g and k: bug, buck or balk, bog. That kind of thing. She works on breath support, tongue coordination (count your teeth with the tip of your tongue--now do it on the outside of your teeth).

Physical therapy has focused on balance a lot lately. She does a lot of standing on balance cushions which are just these spongy rectangles that are hard to stand on. Then balance and twist, or balance and shift your weight back and forth, or balance and move your hips like a hoola hoop. There are plenty of variations. Then there are stepping exercises for strength using one of those short steps from cardio workouts. She does all of this in the parallel bars.

Occupational therapy usually includes doing fine coordination stuff with wrist weights on. Often she'll do e-stim to strengthen her left arm muscles. Every day includes the arm bike--today that was especially challenging because he raised the resistance on it. Sometimes she does tactile exercises, like finding popcorn seeds in a ball of putty. Today she did finger fanning exercises. That was particularly tough since her tone was higher than usual.

She walked back to the car with her canes, and we put the air cast on her right ankle because she was pretty tired. She did fine, although by the end, her right ankle was really bothering her. It looked pretty good to me, but apparently it was really fighting her. She said it was a good thing she had ankle support.