Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Night Driving

The attendant at the gas station begins to clean our windshield. Suddenly I hear from behind me, "Kween up! Kween up! Buddy.." Judah was singing "The Clean Up Song"! Willow & Sebastian joined in. We all sang "The Clean Up Song" to the guy cleaning our windshield, haha.

Judah definitely seemed different today. I think the nebulizer (treatment done last night) made a difference. The medicine in that is supposed to help detoxify your system. Apparently many doctors rave about it. Scott forgot to do Judah's nebulizer tonight (I was gone all night), so tomorrow will be a chance to maybe see if the progress continues after missing a treatment or if it flattens off & booms up again after the next treatment. It's basically taking care of your body. Often in life it seems that things just come back to taking care of yourself.. it's often all you needed to do! And white vinegar.. you can do anything with white vinegar

I barely slept last night. Scott came home for lunch & I was able to get a nap in. Sleep was crucial because I was signed up for a workshop in Portland this evening. And this was also going to be my first time driving at night in maybe close to a year? I tried out my new eye drops last night. They are supposed to help with my night vision/gargantuan pupils. I drove a couple miles last night after I put them in. Everything seemed better, not perfect, but considerably better. The lights weren't fluorescent bursts & explosions anymore! I could even read street signs! What I didn't expect tonight was to drive for 3 hours!! It was a 2 hour drive to the workshop in Portland - what should have been a 45 minute drive. This made me an hour late for a 2 hour class, ugh!!! Then the drive home was another hour. The woman who ran the workshop asked me what part of Portland I lived in after I had asked her about finding some help for Judah. I told her I had just driven from Salem, for 2 hours. She giggled and said, "I go to Salem too!" Apparently she does the same workshop here in Salem sometimes.. how great that is of her, how awesome.

The workshop was on augmentative communication. She talked a lot about a device that works as a speech aid for those who are verbally challenged. This device costs seven THOUSAND dollars. It was basically a class on how to communicate with someone who struggles with communication - how to model for them as you teach them in many different ways. She also included frustrations they may have that you could be causing. I asked how one could qualify for the device. After hearing so much about it, there was no doubt in my mind that it could benefit Judah immensely. She said we would need to get a prescription from our doctor, take it to our speech therapist & ask for an augmentative eval. I asked for names of therapists she would recommend we take our prescription to. Firstly she said herself & then she went on to talk about a place in Keizer.. and a new therapist they had gotten there. Turns out, she was talking about our therapy place and actually specifically referring me to Judah's therapist! ha. Apparently Judah's therapist & this woman are pretty connected. What are the odds! So definitely trying that one, definitely. The 2 hour drive? Worth it.

This was the class:

Use of Augmentative Communication in the Home: Tips to being a successful communicator
 
Bethany Bertoti, MS, CCC-SLP, is a pediatric speech-language pathologist at Providence Neurodevelopmental Center for Children. Bethany is certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and has an extensive background in augmentative and alternative communication.
 
This 2 hour course is geared for parents, families, caregivers, in home SLPs, and OTs to learn some basic techniques in integrating your child’s communication system (from low tech to high tech SGDs) into your daily life WITHOUT creating added stress

Learn to:
  • Recognize communication vs "testing"
  • Use low tech- high tech SGDs in a variety of settings in the home and community
  • Identify at least 3 daily activities that you ALREADY do that a communication system can be integrated into.
Since my night driving seems to be back, I'm going to try to make some of the support groups & workshops (after checking to see that they aren't held HERE) and even playgroups they have there! Scott wants to do the workshops as well. They have free childcare for patients & people visiting the hospital - if we qualify that could be extremely handy. Of course, if we lived in Portland we would have started all of this long ago. They have so many resources in Portland - well, compared to here anyway!!
Judah chose underwear over a diaper this afternoon. He kept it dry, but wasn't really in it long enough to need to go to the bathroom. An hour after he had requested underwear, we had to go get Sebastian, grab some food & then I left for Portland soon after. So he only wore underwear for an hour. He didn't even want to change into a diaper! Tomorrow we are busy too - but I will make damn sure we do the underwear Judah!! Damn sure.


Meds Completed
  • Vitamin D3 2000 IU one daily(morning)
  • bethanechol 25 mg 1/2 tablet 2/day
  • DMG 125 mg w/Folinic Acid &Methyl b-12 3 capsules in morning
  • WP Minerals 1/day
  • Sleep factor
  • Creon (pancrilipase)
  • his b-12/folinic shot 
  • Beta TCP 1-4 daily










  • Meds not complete -
    There were in milks he didn't finish:
  • Oxy-Mag Powder 1/2 teaspoon 1/day
  • Molasses 1 tsp in almond milk
  • Levocarnitin 10% 1 Tablespoon 15MLS every morning
  • DOCU 150/15ML Liq Hi-Tech 2 MLS

  • Meds didn't take -
    • Powder B-6 1/2 tsp (fridge mix) every 3-5 days
    • skin rash med not needed
    • Miralax
    • Fish Oil 
    • Organic coconut butter 1-3 tsp/day  - 1 tsp
    • Nebulizer
    Meds we don't have -
    • Iron up 1 tsp/day
    • Probiotic 1 daily in morning

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