Baby Steps for Ava

Update on Ava’s recovery…….

We wanted to again thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers for our family, especially Ava. Ava remains in therapy 5 days a week. She is in physical therapy 5 days a week, occupational therapy 5 days a week, speech therapy twice a week and visual therapy. She seems to be making improvements on a daily basis. To us that see her every day they seem like baby steps but to those who see her maybe once a week it seems like she is making great strides. The bottom line is she continues to improve and that is the most important thing. Her speech is still slurred at times but her vocabulary is back to where it was pre-accident. We have to prompt her most of the time to say specific words but she does repeat them. She will say Mama, Dada, Jack, Isa, Grandma and Callie without any prompting which is music to our ears! She is starting to sit by herself for longer periods of time and is able to transition from lying to sitting pretty effectively. She is also starting to crawl….more of a military crawl but we’ll take that for now.

We finally received the kid walk last week. We had been using the demo at Christus Santa Rosa for the past several weeks. It is not always Ava’s favorite thing however it seems like the time she spends in the kid walk(her tolerance level) increases with each time she is placed in it. She is able to take small steps using the kid walk and I am certain that this will be instrumental in helping her to regain the skills necessary to begin walking again. Ava’s vision is still impaired and we aren’t certain to what degree. We do know that she has a left visual field cut and that she is able to see in her right visual field. Her doctor said that the amount that she is seeing in her right visual field is improving. The last time we visited the eye doctor she noticed that Ava’s right eye has the tendency to deviate to the outside. Most likely due to the fact that her vision is better in her left eye which causes her to ignore her right eye. We are currently patching her left eye up to 4 hours a day. The goal is to make the right eye work more and hopefully the vision can be restored. It is amazing how complicated vision is….sorry that I am not able to break it down like Fred does so beautifully.

Ava continues to fight the fight! She gets easily frustrated but to some degree I think this is what keeps her going. She wants to be running and playing with all the kids just as much as we all want it. Someday soon I am hopeful that she gets exactly what she wants! Until that day (and always) we will be here to love and support her! Thank you all for the kindness you have given to Ava and our family over the past three months. We are in a better place because of each and every one of you!

Love,
Traci