I've been a very bad blogger this summer! I guess I just have so much to blog about that it keeps building up and building up and I need such a huge chunk of time to do it all that I keep putting it off....you know how it goes. I live by the Procratinator's Creed: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
Anyhow, there are a few things I want to post about, including Jesse's 6 month follow-up with Dr. C (developmental pediatrician). But right now I'm posting about Jesse's speech therapy.
We FINALLY, after FIFTEEN MONTHS of waiting, got Jesse in to see the SLP, Kim, that works with the development program at the Janeway. It was a good appointment in all...and it lasted for about an hour and forty-five minutes, which was kind of surprising to me. I figured it would be an hour at the most.
At first the way she spoke to Jesse was very exaggerated and simple, but after about a half hour she seemed to get the fact that there's nothing wrong with his receptive language. (I did also tell her that his private SLP had just tested his receptive language a few weeks ago and found it to be perfectly normal.) She played with him a lot to get a grasp of what he was capable of, and she spoke with Jesse's home therapist quite a bit too. She wanted to know what programs he was currently doing and how he was doing with them.
Overall, she thinks he's doing really well. He's rapidly gaining language. Right now she wants us to work more on verbs, which we've been doing anyways (and are coming along!). She thinks speech sounds should take a back seat to more general language development. I don't think I really agree with this though, since he's rapidly gaining language fairly naturally as it is now. She had some suggestions for his therapy, too, which was great. She's very familiar with ABA therapy and so can make suggestions for programs to work on. And we're planning a home visit for later this month.
My one big concern though is that she generally only sees her patients once every 2 months. I'm not liking this, since he's been going weekly and it's obviously working. But Kim said that she generally works in more of a consultative role with the whole therapy team. I think that could be partly true, but I'm also pretty certain it's in large part due to lack of resources. So, we've made the decision to keep up our sessions, on a biweekly basis, with Jesse's private speech therapist.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a chance to update on Jesse's appointment with Dr. C.
Just going through this blog for the first time. I did know bits and pieces of your journey through your posts, but wow. You are doing such an amazing job. And Jesse is fantastic!! I wish our health care could better accommodate these kinds of things, especially out there. Why does it seem like NFLD (the whole maritimes, really) gets the short end of the stick for so many important things?
ReplyDeleteThanks Jordan! I think NL gets the short end of the stick in a lot of ways because we have a small population, and most all specialized services are located in St. John's (which is good for us, but sucks for everyone else). Another thing is that we don't have a speech therapy program, physiotherapy program, or occupational therapy program at our university, so those services are hard to recruit for in the public system, and not too many choose to come here and set up private practise since they have lives and families elsewhere in Canada.
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