Nearing the End of the School Year
Things have been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks. Cathy’s been traveling, Sue’s had some health problems, and Maria’s had a few issues too.
Maria had several Vitalstim treatments last week to get her in the best shape possible for her barium swallow on the 1st. Despite the treatments she still did quite poorly, aspirating several times during the test. Although they didn’t mention a feeding tube, they recommended that we give her honey-thick liquids only - no food. We are stubbornly continuing to give her food, but it’s still the mushy stuff. She has trouble with it and we have to feed her slowly but we still think it’s best. We go back to her regular feeding therapist this Thursday so we hope she has some good advice.
We closed out her current IEP this week and set up goals for next year’s. The meeting had her teacher and all her therapists so we could discuss progress and goals. Her teacher talked about how they were afraid to leave her alone for even an instant at the beginning of the school year but, as they’ve gotten to know here, they’ve become more confident and realized that Maria often makes the most progress when people back off and let her do it herself. That’s a lesson we are still learning after four years.
We talked about how Maria is becoming more communicative in her way. Cathy and I have notices how Maria lets us know when she’s in pain, even if we can’t always tell what hurts. In the past she might jump if something happened like getting a fold of skin caught in the belt buckle, but after that she’d just sit happily. Now she has long-term reactions to things and lets us know when she’s not happy.
The last day of school is coming up and it’s going to be a bit hard to go back to having her home all the time. The teacher tried to get her on the year-round school but it was decided that she’s not likely to lose her skills over the summer so she doesn’t qualify. They will see how she does in the fall. The teacher thinks (and I agree) that it will take Maria some time to get used to being back around so many kids again and that could be enough to qualify her for summer school next year.
She has a follow-up with her neurologist this week along with, as mentioned, her normal feeding therapist. She got a couple of blessings at a Greek Orthodox monastery yesterday, so we’re covering all the bases.