2 Weeks ago Finn had his first appointment at the CP Clinic here in Columbus. It was a 4 hour doctors appointment. In that time every specialist you could think of came in to evaluate Finn to see how he is growing and developing. Now, I have some experience with this because when Finn first went to his Complex Care appointment, as well as feeding clinic, we had multiple meetings with a handful of specialists at one time and it was all very repetitive and exhausting. But this was the clinic I actually had to fight for Finn to get in to....which is weird because he has CP! It took me close to 2 years to get Finn into this clinic... I wanted him and needed him to get into this clinic bc of the types of specialists that will be seeing him and evaluating him. First we saw the OT and PT. They came into the room and stretched and flipped him in different positions to determine his range of motion. We are very lucky that Finn has great range of motion, and what that basically means is all of Finn's limps can be stretched in ways that the typical person can move. With Finn's high tone and spacticity this could be a problem later down the road, but right now we are still doing good. They recommend that Finn wear a resting hand splint on his right hand b/c his wrist has developed wrong. Hopefully if we can get him this splint it will prevent it from getting any worse.
Next Finn got his hips x-rayed. The Physical Medicine doctor came into the room to tell us that Finn's left hip is slightly out of place. She didn't seem too concerned by it at this point in time, but said we will just have to keep an eye on it. This is why doing Finn's stretches a couple of times a day are so important. When I stretch Finn's hip out the left hip does eventually sit properly, but it could easily get worse if I decide to neglect his daily stretches...which I would never do.
Next we saw a pediatrician who specializes in seeing kids with special needs. I have heard wonderful things about him from my CP mommy friends, so I was really excited to meet him. The first thing he says to me is that he looked at Finn's MRI before he came into the room and that Finn's MRI is "pretty incredible....and not in a good way". He goes on to say that when you see an MRI that has the extent of brain damage that Finn's does, you expect the kid to look/act a certain way, but Finn doesn't. And that's a great thing. He is better than what he "should" be. Just another example of how much of a fighter this little boy is. So the doc, of course, wants me to relive my pregnancy and birth story which is always still incredibly hard for me to talk about. I am in tears and asking this doctor why this happened....why me? why Finn? No one can give me an answer or pinpoint what exactly happened. Then he asks if I saved my placenta. I kind of laugh off that question...no. of course not...why? And he suggests that perhaps a blood clot formed in the placenta, which could explain why blood did not get to certain parts of Finn's brain and why I suffered from hypertension, then it dissolved on its own. Unfortunately there is no way to find out if this is the case since I didn't save the placenta. I currently have 2 doctors reviewing all of mine and Finn's medical records trying to figure out what happened during my pregnancy. This was the first time I had anyone suggest to me that it could have been a blood clot in the placenta. Strange. We got a referral to genealogy to see if they can offer any further explanation. We will probably never know for sure....and every doctor tells me that the odds of this ever happening again is extremely minimal, but that doesn't stop me from being extremely gun shy about ever becoming pregnant again.
Next we saw a speech therapist. This is the one therapy that I don't feel like a complete failure at. This is the therapy that Finn thrives at. OT and PT are harder for him because his body doesn't cooperate as easily as he/we would like, but with speech, it is all cognitive and you can see Finn learning right before your very eyes. The speech therapist would hold out 2 different objects in her hands and ask Finn to point to a specific one. And he was able to answer correctly all the 3 different times she asked him. My heart swelled with pride.
That's the one thing I wish people knew about Cerebral Palsy. Just because a person's body doesn't function "typically" doesn't mean that their mind is broken. A lot of times people see Finn and just assume he can't understand anything that is said to him. So many times I have had people talk over Finn or completely ignore him all together because they just assume that he can't understand. Finn might not be able to control his body like me and you, but he understands a HUGE amount that is said to him.
