There’s No Place Like Home

Now that we’re home, I actually have less time to blog than I did in Birmingham. The apartment was a lot smaller than our house, which was a blessing in terms of things like cleaning, and the drive to therapy didn’t take as much time. Sarah Kate will be having therapy three days per week in Decatur, but we will still make the drive to Birmingham twice a week (this week it’s Monday and Friday, and we expect that to be the case every week for awhile). All of that to say…the blogs will continue, but they will be fewer and further between. I’ll try to post at least once or twice a week.

Friday was a very long day for us. We showed up for therapy at noon and left at 4:30 to come home. Sarah Kate was working hard most of that time – only about thirty minutes was “down time,” and that only because her braces had to be recast. I’m not sure who those braces were made to fit, but it definitely was not my child! We hope to receive a new and improved pair by the end of next week, and I also hope her Nikes hold out that long. It’s difficult to find shoes that fit over the braces (and don’t look ridiculous!), so she has been wearing the same pair of Nike shoes – plain white with a pink swoosh – since last March. Because she has done so much crawling, the inside edge around her big toes has worn completely through the rubber down to the leather. I’m crossing my fingers that we don’t see daylight or her pigs before next Friday.

The reason for having two trips to Birmingham each week, instead of one like we had expected, is because they want her to have one day each of week of occupational therapy (OT) in addition to the PT. She is intensely fearful whenever she is expected to walk without holding onto something, even if the therapists are behind her holding onto her waist or legs. Her proprioception (the sense of where her body is in space) has not completely returned, so she is afraid of falling even when she knows that she’s not in danger of doing so. She was similarly afraid several months ago before she began to take a few independent steps, but eventually got past it and was able to let go without fear. We are confident that she will be able to do it again, but when is a different matter.

We’ve come to the point now where we’re getting into the difficult part of the journey. Therapy is just as frequent, but we’re probably not going to see changes coming as quickly. We’re all tired and a little bit grumpy. We have been blessed by your prayers – continue to lift us up as we begin this steeper part of the journey.

When you walk, your steps will not be hampered; when you run, you will not stumble. – Proverbs 4:12