It has been many months since I have been on here. So much has been going on. We do not have Internet at home so it makes posting so much harder and before we had dial up which in its own way didn’t make posting very easy.

Melissa had a birthday she is now 5 years old! Where has the time gone? She enjoyed her special cake we made for her. She even reached out and grabbed a handful of frosting and stuck it in her mouth. We were all cheering her on as she has not done that before.

We were presented with a wonderful opportunity to do more Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. So here we are in Madison Wisconson for a month. Today is day number three. We will be doing another 40 treatments. When Melissa is done she will have had 95 Hyperbaric treatments. We have been very grateful for this treatment as it really gave us Melissa back. It has been so neat listening to the testimonies of other families who have seen amazing results with this treatment.

Well, since Feb we have done so much with Melissa. She was still continuing to receive PT, OT, Speech, and Pool therapy until the end of school. We are now on the summer schedule (ESY) which is much lighter.

We had Melissa’s IEP in May and the new school administration recommended that Melissa attend Children’s Care Hospital and School (CCHS) for school. Children’s Care is a school that only deals with children like Melissa. I got the 25 pages plus all supporting paperwork filled out and turned in to them and Melissa was accepted (really I didn’t have a doubt that she would be accepted since she has worked with at least 6 therapists at CCHS over the last four years). We still need to have a meeting when we get back from WI to make a plan with all of her therapists as to what services she will get while she is there. She will be going two days a week right now to transition and we will see how she does before we decide to up that time.

We had an adaptive communication evaluation and I thought that we would be leaving with different ideas and equipment to help transition Melissa into some form of communication. How wrong I was we left with them suggesting only more switch practice. Melissa is so board with the switch she want something else to do and she gets so frustrated when she can’t get her point across. How frustrating for us and Melissa.

We are so excited we got on the local Family Support Network which as been great for our family. The goal of the network is to help with things in a way that will help keep children like Melissa in the home. They purchased a special needs jogger stroller for Melissa. We love that stroller. We live in the country 2 1/2 miles form the nearest paved road and all we have is gravel and grass. Melissa’s other chair would shake so bad I was not joking when I would say it was giving her shaken baby. So because of this she didn’t get to go out as much. Now with the new chair it is so smooth off road. Thank you Family Support!

We are not having as much luck figuring out what to get for a wheel chair for her. As a parent how am I suppose to decide which chair will be best for my child for the next three years from a picture? That is what we are expected to do. We need to decide and soon as Melissa has outgrown her Kid Kart and needs a chair for school that has a tray and good side support. Plus once we figure it out it will take a good two plus months to get the chair(you’ve got to love the approval processes).

On the plus side we continue to see changes in Melissa. She is so much more social she smiles all the time. She is so close to sitting up she now has enough strength she just needs the balance to do it. She is reaching for more things and when the kids eat in front of her she watches their every move and tries to grab their food out of their hands. She has also put on over 6 pounds in the last six months! That is huge for Melissa. She has a few special toys that she can hit and make them play noise she gets the cause and effect from these toys.

Life is good and we can’t wait to see the changes yet to come for Melissa.