Abbi's doctors

Abbi has had some new doctor appointments, with a neurologist, a speech therapist, and an occupational therapist that we've been working with for about 2 mos. I am just THRILLED with the progress we are making with these new physicians!!

The occupational therapist is giving us all kinds of ideas and tips to help abbi do better in "real life"... one of the goals we're working on right now is eating with a spoon. We're teaching abbi how to "scoop" beads and water with a big flour scoop. Next will be working with the same things using a spoon. Hopefully before long she'll be feeding herself! how neat would that be! :)

The speech therapist seems to have some great ideas for Abbi so far and gave me the best compliment about being abbi's mom and having patience & just being so involved in her life and in her care. There's nothing that I think a mom can hear from someone else that could beat that... being told you're a good, attentive, mom, is the best thing in the world :) The therapist seemed to think that Abbi has a lot of good possibilities, but we have a lot of work ahead, so there is going to be a lot of changes coming up on how we work with her. She is also wanting to get abbi into a school she told me about for services, and its up to me whether i want abbi in classes part time or not. I'm going to check out the classroom size, talk to the teachers and the special ed department about what they could offer her in the classroom and definately consider it. I think it would be so great for abbi to be around other kids. Meanwhile, we'll keep doing homeschool in addition to regular school (especially since we focus on "unschooling" as our style here at home and try to make things more fun/life based). :)

Finally, the neurologist is the biggie. He is wanting to change abbi's meds, which is great. He is wanting to get her off the depakote and klonapin, and up her Topamax. He is also wanting to get her on some other meds that seem to work better for kids these days with seizures like her. We are getting an EEG for her in the next couple weeks to see exactly what her seizure levels are, and work with the specific types she is having. He is against surgery, which we are also, so that's wonderful!!! He really likes abbi a lot and got down on the ground with her to play, and just treated her like a grandpa would treat his grandchild. he was REAL and you could tell he loves his job. he's a Christian too, and said some things to me about Abbi and God that just STILL give me goosebumps.

Overall, lots of good news. Lots of promise ahead!