CIT-Day Eight

Sammy's left arm really is getting stronger. You can't tell from the picture but this is one of my shopping bags and it was filled with cans of food. He was dragging it around for the longest time. While Sammy's affected arm is tighter (tone) then his right arm, it has always been so much weaker to the point that he rarely bothered to use it to pick up heavy items. This is a great step for him.

Today at therapy he was doing a really good job with individual fingers pushing buttons. He never did this before, it was more of a "batting at" type of movement, that is still functional, but not graceful. Sammy was also able to slightly rotate his wrist to look at the bottom of cars. Stephanie (OT) was really impressed with how well he is doing. I am always so happy that our therapist are so positive, it keeps me motivated to keep working.

Also, a happy moment last night for us was to see how easy it is for him to feed himself now. We had some fruit snacks the first day of CIT, he could not get them into his mouth and he was frustrated. Today, Joseph and Sammy snuck a whole box of fruit snack and I found Sammy was easily feeding himself them. Our conversation was as follows "Sammy did you eat this candy?" "No...." smiles showing a big mouthful of fruit snacks "Jo-Jo eat candy!".

Challenges are still are supination (are you getting tired of reading that?). He still is curling his pointer finger. He is really doing well with his "adaptive" pincher grasp. He really likes to use his two middle fingers and thumb together. Daniel has been doing pointer finger games with Sammy for a few months now, only letting Sammy use his left hand to do them and Sammy is doing so much better then before the cast was on. Today, instead of feeling like OH WOW THREE MORE WEEKS, I was thinking WE ONLY HAVE THREE WEEKS LEFT. I am hoping the bivalve cast works well for us, I have this vision of Sammy taking it off, but hopefully he won't and we will have that to constrain him. At first I was so sad to watch him try to do things and then not quite able to do them. But I am so proud of him for never giving up, he doesn't get frustrated he just keeps trying. I am so glad that he is the stubborn, determined little guy that he is.