Therapies

Occupational Therapy

Physical Therapy

Speech Therapy

Baclofen Pump

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)

Cranial Sacral Therapy

Chiropractic Adjustments

Cache County Special Education Preschool

National Association for Child Development (NACD)

Dr. Tennant and the Biomodulator

G-Therapy

Advanced Biomechanical Rehabilitation (ABR)

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Samuel received as much occupational therapy as he could endure (which wasn’t much) during his first 2 months in the hospital. Once we came home, he received a year of occupational therapy in our home once or twice a week. We then attended occupational therapy at a local outpatient clinic twice a month. At this point, we are taking an indefinite break from OT as I really have not been able to find a therapist that I like.  He does receive some occupational therapy at school each day and we have our own home therapy program that we do each day.  OT is meant to help with fine motor skills and daily living activities such as writing, combing hair, brushing teeth, etc. We are mostly using this therapy at this time to teach Samuel to use his arms to activate switches that will help him communicate with us and to help pull himself forward in a combat like crawl.

Samuel received as much physical therapy as he could endure (which wasn’t much) during his first 2 months in the hospital. Once we came home, he received a year of physical therapy in our home once or twice a week. We then attended physical therapy at a local outpatient clinic twice a month. At this point, we are taking an indefinite break from PT as I really have not been able to find a therapist that I like. In addition, traditional PT counters what we are trying to accomplish with ABR (described below).  PT is meant to help with gross motor skills like rolling, crawling, walking, etc. 

Samuel did not receive much speech therapy during his first 2 months in the hospital. He was unable to pass a swallow study at that point and, to this day, still has not had another swallow study done. He did receive a year of speech therapy in our home once to twice a week and then speech therapy twice a month at a local outpatient clinic. Unfortunately, our biggest struggle in therapy has been finding a speech therapist qualified to treat Samuel. There are very few speech therapists in our area and few of them have seen a child such a Samuel who is capable of eating and swallowing, but has a HUGE aversion to anything in his mouth. Therefore, we have not seen much progress in him on this front despite working day in and day out on it.

Samuel had a baclofen pump placed in his abdomen just a few weeks after his accident. It was done as a last resort in an attempt to help reduce his tone. His tone was so bad that he was not only stuck in a backwards “C” shape, but he was constantly posturing. The posturing would cause his heart to race more than 200 times a minute and would cause his breathing to increase to over 90 times a minute. We thought the posturing alone would kill him, as even morphine would not cause him to sleep.

Samuel’s pump was raised to a dose of 1500 micrograms per day, which is a dose unheard of for even adults with the pump. The average dose for children and adults is normally between 300 and 800 micrograms a day. Yet, because of his severe tone, they raised to an unheard of dose despite him being only 2 years old and weighing only 20 lbs.

Because of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT), we have been able to reduce Samuel’s tone and reduce the dose in his pump to less than 100 micrograms per day. We hope to someday remove the pump, as we believe it is inhibiting some of his purposeful function. As an example, one day we reduced his pump 50 micrograms and the next day, he was holding up his head – something we had been unable to achieve in a year’s worth of physical therapy. It was entirely clear that the high dose of the pump had inhibited this function in him.

In addition, Samuel’s pump was placed on the left side of his abdomen when it should have been placed on the right. This mistake by his surgeon precluded us from getting a g-tube to feed Samuel through for 2 1/2 years after his accident.  Eventually, he grew enough that there was room on that side of his abdomen for both the pump and a g-tube.  We do believe the pump helped Samuel in the beginning, but at this point, we believe the side effects are outweighing the benefits and hope to be rid of it sometime in the near future.

We began HBOT 3 months after Samuel’s accident. We initially did 40 treatments – 1 treatment a day, 5 days a week for 8 weeks. We saw enough benefit from those first 40 that we did another set of 40 and since then, we have done 5 more sets of 10 each for a total of 130 HBOT treatments. We have done all of these treatments in a new facility in Murray, Utah.  We dive to 1.5 ata with 100% pure oxygen for 60 minutes.  We will continue to do more and are considering buying an HBOT chamber for our home.  (However, I don’t know yet if these chambers are as effective as the chambers at the clinic we have been going to.)  But, although the chambers run about $15,000, it will be less expensive than doing another round of 130 treatments at a chamber outside our home.

The changes I contribute to HBOT are:

Samuel’s tone dramatically reduced. We used to have him wear braces on his arms, legs and back each night to bed.  He had lost all the range in his arms and one shoulder.  His head was stuck turned to one side.  His legs were stuck straight and crossed.  And he was developing scoliosis. Now, he wears none of those and his therapists comment all the time that he is one of the most flexible kids they have ever seen – even compared to kids without cerebral palsy. Samuel’s vision returned to normal. His swallow returned and he stopped drooling. He started vocalizing. He started moving his arms and legs and eventually learned to roll over. He started batting at things with his hands. He started smiling and eventually, even laughing.  And now he is trying to learn to combat crawl.  I attribute almost all of this to HBOT despite all the other therapies we have tried.

This is a therapy we just began provided by a sweet lady near our home. She uses the energy in her hands to move the fluid in Samuel’s spinal column and in the ventricles of his brain. If nothing else, this therapy is very relaxing and can rid a person of a headache in just a few minutes.

Samuel goes to the chiropractor weekly so get his back adjusted. Children with cerebral palsy are very prone to scoliosis and this is something we are trying to prevent. He loves his chiropractor, Steve, and thinks that he is playing when he tries to adjust Samuel.

Samuel attends a special preschool for children with disabilities 4 days a week. He LOVES it! He gets to read books, color, paint, play on the computer and make all kinds of cool things. He also gets some physical, occupational, speech and vision therapy there. He loves to interact with the kids. He gets to go outside when it is warm. And he loves it when the teacher and kids sing. There are several aids in the class who help out, so Samuel is well taken care of each and every day he is there. His teachers are careful to ensure that Samuel gets moved around and repositioned often and he even rides the bus home each day. It has been a WONDERFUL thing for him and his mom.

This is an organization that evaluates Samuel every 3 months and then prepares a home therapy program for us to do with him each day. In the past 18 months, these therapies have included many things; from helping Samuel learn to roll over to using flashcards to teach him the names of new objects and to sight-read words. They have helped us address every aspect of Samuel from helping his vision and hearing to helping him feel light touch and deep pressure. It has been a wonderful thing because, if nothing else, it gives us a structured program to do each day so we can at least feel like we are making progress and headed somewhere. Recently, we have been working with the NACD to increase Samuel’s proprioception (knowledge of where his limbs are) as we move towards teaching him to crawl. However, with the introduction of ABR (described below) into Samuel’s schedule, we are going to discontinue the NACD program for a while.  This is due to 2 things:  first, cost as we simply cannot afford to pay for both and second, the physical portion of the NACD program will counter what we are doing with ABR and we feel we have a good enough grasp on the intellectual portion to create our own home schooling program for Samuel at least for a while.

This is a new therapy that we are just beginning in April of 2007. We are changing Samuel’s diet to ensure it is healthier and more capable of sustaining new cell growth and regeneration. This diet was suggested to us by Dr. Tennant. Dr. Tennant also introduced us to the biomodulator that is a little machine we will use to give Samuel’s body voltage. Through a lot of research, I have become convinced that the body needs voltage to heal and that our bodies actually increase their voltage when we have an injury in order to heal the injury. But with chronic conditions, our body is sometimes incapable of sustaining enough voltage to entirely heal itself and that’s where the biomodulator comes in. It will help Samuel’s body by giving it enough voltage to be able to heal and regenerate both his body and his brain. We are hoping to see great things from it! And we also hope to someday travel to Texas to visit Dr. Tennant in his institute for further treatments with more investigational inventions.

G-therapy is an ayurvedic treatment that we were able to obtain from India.  It is just a combination of tiny pills that Samuel takes twice a day.  The pills are completely herbal and have no drugs or toxins in them.  Many parents have seen great results with their children - mostly decreased tone, increased motor function, increased awareness and better speech and language.  We received a 6 month supply of the pills and have only given Samuel about 6 weeks worth of them.  We have not seen any drastic changes or anything that we can specifically relate to the g-therapy.  But, we will continue to try the rest of the pills to see if we get some results.

ABR is a therapy we just began in April of 208.  It is probably the most difficult of all the therapies to explain and I don’t explain it very well :).  Basically, it is based on the assumption that structure of the body increases function.  And that in the 48 hours following a large insult to the brain, the internal organs and smooth muscles suffer severe damage.  This damage results in a collapse of the trunk and neck which in turn causes distortions all over in the body as the body attempts to fill in these collapses. 

ABR is a therapy that is completely passive for the patient.  It requires us to work with small pulsing pressure of our hands on Samuel’s trunk and neck to reestablish and reform the internal and smooth muscles.  In turn, this will rebuild the volume in his trunk and neck and help to resolve the distortion in the structure throughout his body.  Once this is completed, he should be able to sit up and hold up his head, thus giving him more control over his arms and legs as he won’t be fighting his trunk and neck as he attempts to move. 

This is a pretty general description of the therapy as it is really involved and very specific.  But there are many moms who now have children who can sit up and use their arms and legs in a purposeful manner where they had no hope of that before.  However, we are looking at a few years of this therapy before we can hope to see such drastic improvements.  We are excited by its possibities, though! 

And just as a quick note, the reason that traditional physical therapy counteract what ABR is trying to accomplish is because traditional physical therapy works the large outer muscles of the body.  Strengthening those muscles only causes the distortions in the body to increase.  These then strong muscles, pull against the smooth muscles underneath that ABR is working to strengthen.  Therefore, the smooth muscles need to be strengthened first and then once the body is in alignment, the large outer muscles will find function on their own and will strengthen from everyday use.