Guess What's Up?

Guess what's up?

Christian's head, that's what!

TIIIMBERRR!!

Helping keep his mouth closed while he has his head up. He's not thrilled.

       

 Admittedly, I assist him in positioning him in prone positioning so he can get a chance to work those muscles. However, the lifting of the head is all Christian. And half the time it's totally unprovoked! Meaning, I don't have to tickle his neck, clap in front of him, get his attention, hop around on one foot, sing a song, or promise him candy. He's doing it on his own! That last picture on the bottom right was taken from across the room. I caught him in the act! His upper body strength has increased so much in the last few weeks. What's the cause? My best guess is a mixture of the keto diet, weaning seizure-zombie medication, and a hell of a lot of prayer.

Why am I bragging about how insanely proud I am of my little blond boy? Because I've had some rough months. And I've been waiting not so patiently to be able to post something fun and new and finally...FINALLY...that time has come. And I'm taking that time to shout it from the rooftops, dammit. Did I mention I was proud of my boy?

Because if I didn't, here's another reason...

Christian has vision therapy once a month. I love, love, love his vision therapist. She always brings great perspective at reading body language and response. She also has really simple solutions to get Christian's attention. Well, it was time to test his vision again. She tests his vision using acuity cards. You can read about them here.

They look like figure A....

 Photos can be found here.

The cards on the left are place horizontally in front of the child. The vision therapist looks to see if the child can "find" the stripes and whether the child moves his gaze to "look" at the stripes. The thinner the stripes, the harder it is to see. The stripes appear on the left and right side of the card. The vision therapist will turn the card the other way to see if the child searches for the stripes on the other side of the card. This tests his right and left side vision fields.

Well, I'm happy to report that Christian improved by four cards! His vision approved from approximately 20/960 to approximately 20/260. I am so excited!

Just to review, Christian has Cortical Vision Impairment (CVI). This means that his vision impairment is not actually about whether the eye can see. In fact, his eye has the ability to have perfect vision. It's about how the brain allows that eye to see and how the brain, in turn, processes the information. Because of his injury, his vision is impaired. As the brain heals, so does the vision.

This test is also about responsiveness. It's the child making a choice to look for the stripes on either side of the card. To me, his level of responsiveness improving is even more exciting.

So, if you couldn't tell, I'm celebrating a little bit for Christian's recent accomplishments. They're small, but they're so meaningful to me and so emotionally hard fought.

Join me in shouting from the rooftops, won't you?!