CIT-Update

The cast was removed this past week. At first he totally was doing everything with his left hand. But about six hours after the cast was taken off he started being completely right handed again. I will say that his movements with his left hand are much more fluid now post cast. If he is holding something with his right hand he no longer will pass the object to his left to grasp another object. He will just pick up the object with his left hand without any promptings. Also when things are on the left he will use his left hand. We have been trying to make it a point to put everything besides an open top cup on his left hand side to encourage him to keep doing this!

Sammy got the bivalve cast the day after the cast was taken off. This is not going over great at our house. It is super bulky and he is constantly picking at the ace bandage that ties it together. I think it will work great for therapy though. It is just hard when he knows it can be taken off and on. Since the bivalve is not really going as well as we had hoped. We have thought about doing another round of CIT in the fall depending on what the doctors and therapist think. I think it could be a perfect time schedule wise for us to have extra therapies and more time for the home program. I want to do one more round before he turns three and ideally not during the winter months. We really have seen great changes even after the cast has been taken off. I am really glad that I set my expectations low though, because he is always going to be right handed. We have seen little changes and for them I am grateful. Like today he was carrying a large library book to me. Before he would of only held this with his right hand, because his left arm was so weak he never relied on it for weight lifting. Today he nicely had two hands on the book. He is WAY better at knowing how much pressure to carry and hold things. It used to be that his left hand would turn purple when he was riding on his bike or pushing a cart. But now he is much more fluid with his movements in this sense.

Daniel and I are both really happy that we did CIT. And we both want to do it again. Sammy took right to the cast and had no problems at all the whole time the cast was on. He was patient with himself and he really had a language explosion during the casting time. Saying lots of new words and lumping lots of words together. I know that this is typically the age where you start hearing more of these things. But I also think his brain had to work so hard that it positively impacted other parts of his brain as welll. I look forward to another round of CIT. I do think we will try to do six weeks again if we can. Four weeks did not seem long enough. Though it was tough the last week. Sammy was fine, but it was driving me crazy! There is a lot that you do that requires two hands, and Sammy is normally so independent that it was hard to adjust to what we needed to be doing for him. But he is back 100 percent to his normal independent 2 year old self.