The Amazing Owen Higgins

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Therapy and Welcome Tessa!

About a month ago we started the process of getting Owen a helmet so that we could try some riskier moves in therapy without worrying about hurting his big noggin. It finally came in on the 19th. It doesn't fit very well, but it will do for now until we can get another one fitted and made: Owen was busy eating his keys, but it kept him happy while we fussed with helmet. We also welcomed Tessa, Owen's new attendent. Attendent is the word that Medicaid uses for the people that they pay to come in and work with the kids and stay with them so that Mom and Dad can get something done during the day. Owen and Tessa seem to really get along well and she really gives him a workout throughout the day - practicing his sitting and standing and talking and all that sort of thing. Owen continues to work on his standing: And on his sitting with appropriate attitude: And on proving that he still loves his therapist Nacol, even when she works him really hard: And here you can see him not only sitting up on his own, but also feeling confident enough to reach out for a toy: Owen's hearing is coming along nicely. He can recognize so many commands now. The other night we were sitting down reading a book and I repeatedly said "Turn the page" and time and time again he reached up and turned the page for me. He has repeated this many times since. We are fairly certain that he is saying "Hi" now. It's always the first thing I say to him when I turn his implant on in the morning. About a week and a half ago he started saying "h" "h" "h" whenever I turned it on. Now he says "h" 'h" "i" "i" as if the sounds were two separate words. But he is definitely trying and he's getting closer every day. He is also starting to mimic sounds more and more often. So once again, we are thrilled with our little guy's progress!
Posted By Michelle At 5/27/2009 10:14 PM • Comments (5)

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

No, I don't like Spam

This post actually has nothing to do with Owen. I have been getting hit with a lot of comment spam this week. These are people who actually believe that if they leave a comment with a link - or hundreds of them - to some internet drug company that my readers will flock to their sites to stock up on Viagra, Oxycodone and Amphetamines. Not only can I not imagine this working at all given the type of blog this is and the people that read it, it is also obnoxious and makes a mess of my comment sections. As a result I have had to implement something called a Captcha on the comment page. Those of you who are Blogspot users will recognize it - it's a word or two words that have been warped into a funny shape that computers can't read. This means that programs that are written to go out and leave comment spam won't be able to read the Captcha and will therefore not be able to leave a comment. While this will be a bit of a hassle for all the wonderful people that read this blog, it's the only way to keep it possible for me to leave it open to comments. I would appreciate it if everyone could give a go at writing a comment today if they get a chance. This is new code and it needs to be tested to make sure that it works well. If anyone has a problem, please click the "Contact Us" link on the menu and tell me what happened so that I can fix it. Thanks, and I appreciate your understanding!
Posted By Michelle At 5/12/2009 9:11 PM • Comments (9)

Saturday, May 09, 2009

A Big Boy Bed!!!

Say Good-bye to the Crib!

This was a big occassion for us, for a lot of reasons. It's always a bit bittersweet when your baby moves up from a crib - you realize that they aren't a little baby anymore and are a bit sad, but you rejoice in the fact that they are growing up as well. But there is more to it than that for us. Before Owen's diagnosis I had had visions of his little sister helping us to set up his crib and getting everything ready for her little brother to move in. After they told us that he might not live though, we kinda lost the desire to put together a nursery. It seemed like tempting fate. In fact we didn't put the crib together until after Owen was born. Owen was in the hospital for a month after he was born, so Daddy actually came home and put it together after we knew everything was going to be all right. Putting up the crib was a final acknowledgement that Owen really was going to come home to us.

Now we have taken down the crib and he has moved into his big boy bed - and that is once again a time to take a moment to be thankful that it has all turned out allright. Our beautiful boy has not only come home, but he has thrived and grown big enough to need a real bed!

So, we said good-bye to the crib that both he and his sister used that had become way too small for him:

And hello to some brand new digs:

It's a homemade bed. We were afraid that if we put him in a bed that was off the ground that when he finally learns to pull himself to a standing position he would fall over the edge and hurt himself. So instead we took a standard twin size mattress and made a 16 inch high box around it. This way he can't casually roll out of it in his sleep, but if he manages to crawl over the side he isn't high enough up to hurt himself.

We all had fun making this one for him. Mommy and Daddy built it last weekend, and Sammy and Mommy did the painting and decoration:

Sammy's art:

And Mommy's contribution:

I do think Owen thoroughly enjoys having all of this space to stretch out. In his crib he kept getting his legs caught in the slats when he would try to turn sideways. Now he has room to spread out and no slats to hurt his legs.

Oh, and we have one more final accomplishment for the day. Today was our first day in the pool for the year. Owen loves the water. Last year we had tried putting him in this baby swim ring and he couldn't hold himself up. This year we tried it and he did awesomely! He wobbled a bit at first, but after just a few short minutes he had learned how to keep himself upright and was even experimenting with kicking his feet around to move himself!

Posted By Michelle At 5/9/2009 9:51 PM • Comments (3)

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Owen Uses His Ladder

As promised, I got some better pictures and a video of Owen standing at his ladder. I dusted off the old faithful seven year old camera for a few quick shots. Last week he was able to stand for about a minute. This week he stood for a couple of minutes. He is building up stamina quickly. I really wish I had thought to time it, but I was too busy taking a video. First the pictures:

And then a short video clip. He actually kept on standing for quite a while after this video finished, but video files get huge fast so I just showed the first part where he stands up and finds his balance. Click on the picture to play the video:

So it was a great day in therapy again. His Daddy, Sister and I are all working on a project for Owen that I hope to be able to unveil early next week. Exciting times at the Higgins house!

Posted By Michelle At 5/6/2009 8:59 PM • Comments (2)

Friday, May 01, 2009

Catching Up

It has been a while since my last update - we have been very busy lately. Therefore we have a few things to catch up on. Firstly, we got back the results from the biopsies that were done during all of the GI tests that I posted about a few weeks ago. All of the biopsies were normal. There are no inflammations due to damage, no Hirschsprung's, all of the nerve cells are where they belong and there was no inflammation due to allergies. So why does he have such bad constipation and reflux? No clue. So we took him down to Duke to let them have a go at figuring it out. We didn't really find out anything new there. That doctor bascially said that as long as the biopsies are clean, then it doesn't really matter what the cause for the constipation is - the treatment will be the same. We could go through lots of painful and expensive testing to see if it is because of slow motility or muscles that don't quite fire in the right order or who knows what, but in the end all of those things just require you to give them a lot of laxatives. So I guess that's what we'll do. He also felt that it was probably extreme to consider a Nissen surgery (where they wrap part of the stomach around the esophagus so that nothing can come back up) for the reflux since no damage is being done by the reflux. I am not certain that I buy the idea that it's not a problem to be reliving your meals over and over again all the time, but since we've now had two different doctors tell us that we should not do the surgery yet, I guess we'll take their advice for a while anyway. I am frustrated that they couldn't come up with something more definitive, but the only thing left to do now would be to drive Owen out to the Cleveland Clinic which is the World's Best GI Clinic. That would be a very long drive and we would have to really think about whether or not there would be enough benefit to warrant putting Owen through all those tests again. We're going to give it some time to see how the new regimen that we have recently started with the Miralax works for the constipation. If we can keep it under control then we will probably leave it at that. If it continues to be a huge problem then we'll be hanging out in Ohio for a bit (Kristen would be happy about that anyway, that's Cayman's Mommy and she lives in Ohio). In other better news Owen continues to make lots of progress in his therapy. Since we have started doing feeding therapy every week we have seen a big difference there. When we started he couldn't deal with a piece of food that was too big to fit in his mouth - instead of biting a piece off he would just try to cram it all in and then spit out the whole thing. Now he will bite off a piece and chew it. We also know that some of his constipation was due to the fact that he wasn't chewing his food well enough. He is now happily crunching away on his food and we are just working on stamina. The "O Ladder" as my Dad calls the creation in my last post is really working well with Owen. I don't have any pictures because my camera has died and I'm saving up for a new one. I have an old one that I use to catch a few pictures here and there, but the battery only lasts for about 15 minutes so I have to really plan ahead to use it. Anyway, the ladder has really given him a way to work up to a standing position and to easily steady himself. The other day I brought in a scooter that used to belong to Owen's sister. It has been in storage for a few years and on a whim I brought it in. It looks like this: I tried to sit Owen on the seat and he didn't seem to want to sit down. At first I thought it was a balance thing, but then I realized that he was trying to stand up. He had put his hands on the hand grips and stood right up. He then proceeded to walk halfway across the room while holding onto the handlebars!! I was steadying him so that he didn't fall off to the side, but he just took right off! I certainly didn't expect that! So next I'm going to rig up one of Sammy's old walk-behind toys for him to hold on to and see what he does. Owen has also started doing a lot more at school. He only goes one morning a week, but many times he would just kind of sit and watch the other kids and get cranky if you tried to get him to work with any of the jobs in the classroom (it's a Montessori classroom). The last few weeks have been much more productive however. This week he was all over the classroom (I bring his walker) and he worked hard on the wood cylinders that you pull out of a block, on pulling pieces out of a puzzle, at talking to the fish in the fishtank, and he particularly liked the big sponge with all of the soap suds that they can squeeze. He even made an attempt to play with another child for the first time and while a little girl was scrubbing a shelf he came over and rubbed his hands in the soap bubbles she was making. Finally today we went down for speech therapy in Greensboro. This was probably our best session yet. Owen has really started to vocalize a lot more. The only thing that really sounds like a word is still Mom, but he gave a try at quite a few today. When Emily (the speech therapist) brought out the duck and said "Quack Quack", Owen said "a" "a". I've been working on saying "Uh oh!" whenever he drops something. He dropped a toy during today's session and he said "uh uh". He also said "ah" several times with the airplane - each toy has a song that emphasizes a sound and the airplane's sound is "ah". Owen clearly had a lot of fun at therapy today and participated much more than he has in the past. He has also graduated to sitting up in the big boy booster seat at the table for speech therapy, rather than sitting with Mommy on the floor. I think it has helped to have him more at eye level and for him to know that he can't just lay down and stop working. So it has been an exciting few weeks. And now it's time for this Mommy to head to bed. Good night!
Posted By Michelle At 5/1/2009 10:01 PM • Comments (6)