Day 716 - PT @ the Hospital 🏥, Speech/Feeding Therapy, & Hearing Test 👂

Friday, December 16th, 2022

In the morning James had his PT evaluation at the hospital. It was a little overwhelming since Mom was doing this by herself with James. For instance she forgot the ventilator in the car and had to run back out before valet drive off to get it. We checked in on the 2nd floor where we used to have Speech Therapy but they were very confused about where we were supposed to go. It showed we had an appointment but no one was available to meet with us. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Then they told us to go wait in the 3rd floor waiting room and someone else was going to meet us. As we got off the elevator, we saw our therapist who was talking to a family so we headed to the waiting room. No one came for us for a while. At this point we are now 30 minutes passed. Finally someone asked.for our names and told us to go across the hall to other department. As we were walking over we ran into one of James' primary nurses that he had on theel weekends. She was very busy with 2 children that she didn't recognize us in the moment. 

We finally met our therapist who was James' original PT in the NICU. This place is setup like a giant playroom with smaller rooms inside. Lot of assistive equipment and toys for them to play with. She got out a few toys that all made noise and lit up. James let her know very quickly that he is scared of those toys and cried and just reached for Mom. Even though we removed these toys from the area he had worked himself up so much that he couldn't calm down. Unfortunately the entire appointment was just him crying and holding onto Mom while Mom went over what James can and can't do for PT. We finished up the appointment with scheduling his first session for next week. 

That appointment ran so long that we were really late for our virtual speech therapy that we had planned to do in the car. We were 45 minutes late, but they all stayed on the Zoom. It was our 3 therapists with early steps: PT, Early Intervention, and Speech Therapy. We went over a few things to work on like adding crumbled up Gerber Puffs into his yogurt to create a subtle texture and downloading an AAC app for James' speech. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) refers to the tools and strategies used to assist people who have little or no speech to communicate. AAC apps assist individuals in forming phrases and sentences using symbols and predictive keyboards.

We went home for about an hour and then James and Mom went back out to go to his hearing test around the corner. This was his first during test outpatient. His last test was in the PICU and he had passed b putut his pediatrician wanted us to get a follow-up. We went to HearUSA as the audiologist that is connected with our ENT did not take our insurance which is Medicaid. The doctor was very nice and performed two tests on James. The first involved sticking probes into his ears to test the anatomy of his eardrums and the results came back that he had fluid in his middle ear. But after performing this test a few times (because James was getting upset) we found that the fluid was then and wasn't very much. Then we went into a soundproof booth where James sat on a chair while Mom kneeled in front of him. Mom had to hold his arms down so he would not take the probes out of his ears. Then the show started. James would hear sounds in his ears causing him to turn his head left and right. There were also lights turning on inside these boxes that were to the left and right of him. The doctor open the door and let us know that James was doing terrific. Once we finished he said that James passed. His score was a 15 which was right on the cusp. He explained that with babies and toddlers he would need to spend a lot more time to get that number better to see how sensitive they're hearing really is, but it's not really worth it. 

P.S. You can email James your love and support as often as you’d like. Mom and Dad read these email to James as they come in. We all love them! JamesWestonAbramowitz@gmail.com