Andrea’s First Steps
Today was a big day for Andrea. Her day started with speech therapy, which she did in the standing machine–standing helps her project her voice better. Heather tested her on reading comprehension–during a similar test about a month ago, Andrea got only 50% of the questions right. Today, she scored 100%–big progress in just a month.
Later she got new splints for her hand/arm and feet–big improvements over what she’s been wearing. The expectation is that the hand/arm splint will help wake that arm up, while the splints on her feet will help her with standing and walking.
After getting the feet splints fitted, we had a late afternoon physical therapy session with Denise. After a few attempts at standing, Denise asked her assistant, “should we try that thing I was thinking about earlier?” With a lot of help, Andrea was able to hold herself on the parallel bars and take some small steps (although very big in the scheme of things). The therapy team was so surprised and impressed they came out to cheer her on. Andrea was especially touched when Celeste (who did much of the work on her stiff muscles and joints since discharge) came out and, with tears in her eyes, gave her a big hug.
Here’s a clip (it’s almost five minutes) that shows our girl tackling her biggest feat to date. She has every right to be proud–it was amazing.
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