Once Alex began to recover in the hospital the extent of the damage to his motor skills became apparent as he can no longer move his left arm or leg and his left eye cannot look left since the muscles are so damaged from the incredible swelling in behind it. He also had a lot of difficulty holding up his head and sitting up was out of the question. He slept all the time for the first few days.
Once we brought him home he began to show more signs of strength and alertness, including an ever-present whiny-ness that we were quite grateful for, given the situation! At present he has lost the whiny tone to his voice and has come a long way in his recovery already. It hasn't even been an entire month since his stroke and he can sit up, lean forward, lean backward, and order us around like a pro! Of course, we all jump to help him...
Last Tuesday, August 10, instead of being in Vancouver like planned we were at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital for his first session with his occupational therapist and phsyiotherapist. Thankfully Alex seems to have forgotten about Vancouver and really enjoys his time with the Glenrose! His OT is male and I think that it helps Alex to look forward to the visits, he has a 'buddy' there.
The main kind of therapy they are doing right now is just with play. Since all the damage is on the left side the therapists put all the toys on that side to encourage him to look that way, lean that way and hopefully he will also try to use those limbs more out of habit. We have noticed a few flickers and even a few more obvious movements from his leg and arm over the past few days that are very encouraging!
The therapists all agree that he should be walking and running again someday. They also seem to believe that his left hand and arm will be very useful and we should only see a residual of the damage that is now so very evident in Alex.
The one thing that I am the most grateful for is that the Alex that was my son is still my son. He has the same personality, the same sharp wit and the same tenacity that he always had. Just today he managed to pummel us with a series of "why is...." questions that had me laughing all the way home. Well, to be honest I was laughing because he wasn't asking me, he was asking Daddy!
As some of you may have seen in our updates on Facebook we had to take Alex back to the hospital this past week. It turns out that Alex had a couple of kidney stones pass on Wednesday which was the cause of his sudden pain and vomiting. We did get admitted to the hospital but were released yesterday with no further problems.
In order to determine what kind of stones they were the kidney doctors need to obtain 48 hours worth of urine, every single drop! Since Alex is not potty trained anymore they needed to put in a catheter to accomplish this test. They tried to put one in and failed, poor Alex was so anxious because the nurses did not prepare themselves properly and it took way longer than it should have. I may write a blog entirely dedicated to how to intervene for your child.
At any rate, none of us was willing to try to catheterize him again so they sent us home. Our pediatrician is not concerned about what caused the stones and no more were evident in the ultrasound so hopefully those were an anomaly. Meanwhile, we are cutting back on the foods that cause stones and hoping that the drugs he is on don't create any more.
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