The Mitchells: OCH

Friday, May 18, 2007

OCH

We started Occupational Therapy at Our Children's House @ Baylor. Thursday was our first day and it went SO well. They worked Ella really hard and I think I'm going to enjoy taking her there for the OT. I also talked to them about getting on the schedule for feeding and speech therapy. They need to perform their own swallow study on Ella to make sure that they do the VitalStim on the correct spots (that's where they electronically stimulate her muscles). So, we are scheduled for yet another swallow study on May 31st. Hopefully we will be on the schedule by the middle of June. They test again after 20 VitalStim sessions to see if there is any progress being made...ah, something to measure progress is AWESOME!

Here are some pictures while we were sitting in the waiting room, waiting for Ella's new OT Katie (in both of them Ella is trying to sit up in her stroller):

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Ella's Story

Elizabeth "Ella" Hope Mitchell was born on May 10, 2006 at 3:45pm...by 5am the following morning the whole world turned upside down. The doctors came in to inform us that while Ella had been resting in the Newborn Nursery, she began to have irregular breathing and seizures. It was touch and go for the next 3 days. We were told several times that she probably would not make it alive through the ordeal. She had contracted Group Beta Strep which had resulted in meningitis. Due to the seizures and the infection we had no idea what the long-term effects would be. After Ella spent a long and trying month in the NICU we came home to see where the effects of her illness had left us all.

A few months later, almost a year, we had an official long-term diagnosis...Ella has Cerebral Palsy. She is a happy and loving child. She struggles with physical delays, cognitive delays and all sorts of things that have come and go.

2-eye surgeries to correct lazy eye
3-EEG's to check for siezures
5-MRI/MRV/MRA to check actual brain damage
3-CT scans for brain stuff
1-G-button/feeding tube surgically put in (and then Ella removed herself)
10 (approx)-Swallow Studies
1-Scoliosis Study
2-Kidney Reflux tests
2-Upper GI tests
1-24 hr reflux test
8-hearing tests
countless UTI tests
seemingly a million developmental tests
a hand splint
bath chair
adaptive stroller/wheelchair
stander
gait trainer
AFO's

ha, not to mention all of the therapist...currently: OT 2X/week, PT 3X/week (2 land, 1 horse), ST 3X/week (2 oral motor, 1 speech), develomental 1X/week, vision 2x/month, and we are about to start ACCDAT camp.

As of 4/8/2009.