Her first parent-teacher conference
Cathy and Manolis had their first parent-teacher conference. Maria had a half-dozen therapeutic reports that showed anywhere from 5-50% progress toward her goals. Of course everyone loves her, adults and kids alike. There is one girl in particular who calls Maria her “best friend” and Cathy is thinking of arranging a play date. The aide was saying that the kids love Maria because she “giggles all day”. We’re not sure what they are calling giggling since we’ve never seen that.
Maria still has her chest cold and has been sleeping a lot. She’s going up to the full dose of Depakene this weekend but has been having a lot of episodes recently. It still is fewer that before the medication but more than we like to see. Since stress is a seizure trigger it might just be something she goes through when having bad days.
We continue to research the cochlear implant and just can’t decide if it’s the right decision. The problem is that, although it has a good success rate with auditory neuropathy, it sometimes just doesn’t work. It depends on what part of the auditory nervous system is affected and there is no way to test that. It’s just a matter of doing it and crossing your fingers. The big problem is the whole language acquisition thing. If Maria was showing any real interest in spoken language it wouldn’t be as important, but she just doesn’t even seem to acknowledge it. Other than occasional use of the “more” ASL sign and waving goodbye, communication is just reaching and gazing.
Maria’s VitalStim has been put off until at least January or February because they are so far behind. Cathy was thinking of requesting that it be postponed until summer so it won’t interfere with school. Most of the kids on the waiting list are under three and don’t have that problem so I’d think that would be fine. This is also good because it means we can travel for Thanksgiving.