3-11-14 Updates on Sarah's Speech Therapy, Visual Therapy, and Illness

Sarah goes to speech once a week.  The main issues she has had are the /sh/ /ch/ and /j/ sounds.  She has what they call a "lateral" lisp, and when making these sounds, she does not hold her tongue correctly, and the air comes out the sides.  She also has issues with the /r/ sound, but that is developmental.  When we first talked, her speech therapist told me that it is very difficult to correct, and that some day it will probably just click for her.  But, she also explained that there are steps in the process.  She would work first on saying just the sound correctly, then she would use it in words, then in reading aloud, and then in normal conversation.  She couldn't tell me for sure how long she thought this might take.

Last week, after speech, Sarah got in the van all excited because her speech teacher was so excited at how well she was doing.  She even had her reading aloud.  Her teacher was so impressed that she told Sarah that she might "be kicked out of speech" in the next few weeks.  

Sarah's speech therapist sent me this email:

I couldn’t be more impressed with Miss Sarah.  She has really started to produce /sh/, /ch/ and /j/ sounds so well in the last 2-3 weeks.  She has done so great that we are even practicing while reading aloud.  We went to Mrs. Main’s last Friday and read aloud for her and Sarah got all of her sounds right.  I usually don’t have kids that pick sounds up this quickly and then self-monitor themselves while reading and talking.  She can either practice at home by doing worksheets I send home, or reading aloud very slowly so she can get the sounds right when they come up in the text or practice them in conversation by talking slowing during a certain time at night.  So for practice in conversation, tell her that you are going to practice talking with your /sh/, /ch/, /j/ sounds during dinner or in the car driving home from school or at bedtime.  Just ask her questions about her day or whatever and remind her to slow down so she can anticipate the sounds and self-monitor her speech.  She is doing great.  If we fix these sounds we may wait until later 3^rd grade to work on the /r/.  It is still developmental at this point.

Tuesdays, Sarah has visual therapy.  Five days a week, she has homework to do at home, but Tuesdays are when we actually go and meet with the therapist and track her progess, as well as when we get new activities to work on the following week.

Today, her therapist (whose name is Joy) was so excited to see her progress.  She said that Sarah's diagnosis is one of the hardest to treat, but that she loves it when we come in because she is seeing so much progress.  She didn't anticipate things to go this well.  She expected Sarah to be "stuck" working on the same thing for more than a week.  Each time we have gone in, though, she has had to give her all new work.

Her tracking is SO much better.  She doesn't get lost when reading lines of letters or words anymore (Which, incidentally, has also improved her reading, and she has changed reading groups at school.  She has to read small letters and numbers with "flippers".  She flips between a positive and a negative.  She started at -.5 and +.5.  The ones she got today are -2.5 and +2.5.  Even at her last appointment, she would struggle for a couple of days with the new flippers.  She flew through her stuff with her new ones today.  We also noticed that her "bad" eye is starting to even up with her good eye.  For example, one of the things she has to do with her flippers is read small random letters as we point to them.  Last time, she had 17 with her "bad eye" in 1 minute and 24 with her "good eye" in one minute.  The goal is for her to have 24 with both.  But today, she has 20 with her bad eye, and 21 with her good eye.  Joy was very pleased and said she would rather see that than have her good eye so much better.  Her coordination is also getting better.  And her eyes are getting better at working together when not patched.

Next Monday, Sarah has a progress visit with the eye doctor.  Joy says that she thinks at that point that Sarah will probably start patching each eye for 30 minutes a day (right now she is just patching her good eye for 2 hours a day).  Joy also said she is so excited and cannot wait to see what the doctor thinks next week.  At first, when the doctor estimated Sarah needing 30 visits, Joy thought that wouldn't be enough.  Today she said we might be done between 20 and 25 visits.  So that is excellent.

As for Sarah's illness that she has still been fighting, she still is not 100%.  But, she is doing somewhat better.  So we will just keep waiting for now. 

I also talked to the nurse when we ordered Sarah's next infusion today.  In talking to her (because Sarah has had some bruising from the last infusion, but it isn't even all at the infusion sites), we have decided to try the longer needles with the next infusion.  So we will see how that goes.

We appreciate everyone's prayers and support.