I spent a short time this morning speaking with Dr. Frank Pidcock , the founder and director of Byron’s Constraint Therapy Program. As you may remember, we were surprised to find out that he is my sister-in-law Cathy’s brother. After catching up on some family background I told him that I was a bit disappointed with the fact that as soon as the cast came off, Byron seemed to revert back to his pervious clenched fist, left hand unusable condition. Dr. Pidcock assured me that this is actually quite common. The children tend to do remarkable things while the cast is on, and then often seemingly revert back when it is off. But he reassured me that this often improves as the weeks and months go by post treatment. He said that we don’t actually “rewire” the brain in this short amount of time, but lab studies have shown, with rats etc., that certain neurotransmitters are affected by the repetition of the exercises; and over time this can be built on. Dr. Pidcock said the he spoke to a former patient’s father the other day who told him that the weekend after they got back home, they began to see the most improvement. So I am feely better. It’s an ongoing process!
I was given an “at-home-program” that included a menu of things to continue working on with Byron, and the things we must do every day are:
1) Have him pick up a sippy cup and drink using two hands. If this becomes easy, we can increase the weight by adding more liquid.
2) Have him push his left arm through his shirt sleeve when dressing.
3) Pick up balls and blocks using two hands.
They gave us the program this early so that we could try it now, and still be able to ask questions.
Tomorrow I have been invited to sit in on 30 minutes of Byron’s therapy. I hope I can take pictures!
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