Month: December 2012

Thurs, Dec 6

So we took Zach for his first visit to the occupational therapist today. Initially we had hoped and thought we would be able to do the therapy in Hudson, but when I called to make the appointment the earliest availability was not until the end of January! But we could get in at Akron Children’s the same week so I grabbed it! We were just there last Wednesday so I’m feeling like we are almsot starting to live there! We continue to be so impressed by all the doctors and staff that we interact with at Akron!

As this was my first experience with this sort of thing I did not know what to expect. I even had no idea what the difference between occupational therapy and physical therapy was.

A very nice young woman named Sarah came out to greet us in the waiting room and led us back to a homey room. It was actually a large area designed to simulate a home situation with a kitchen, table, chairs and couch. I understand that it is helpful for people who doing therapy to help them with things around the house if they are actually in a home environment, but it was also relaxing for us too! Once again Sarah, the therapist, addressed her questions directly to Zach, which is how it should be, but I always catch myself wanting to answer for him, but he does just fine by himself. She started with general questions about his wrist to clarify Zach’s first response of “my wrist is messed up.” She asked some good clarifying questions about what daily tasks are challenging for him, etc. Then she did some testing with various instruments. She measured the angles of his wrists, thumb on both hands. Then she did a strength test for both hands. Zach had to squeeze this instrument as hard as he could until it hurt and then stop and report the level of pain (1-10). The left one measured a 45 in terms of strength and the right one only measure a 10. Then she did a finger strength test with a different instrument. His right fingers were about 5-6 pounds off of the left one.

After the tests were completed she talked about things Zach should do at home.
1. Ice – she said to ice the wrist just until it feels numb and the skin is pink. She suggested doing it before homework or before any activity that he will need to use his wrist. She also suggested icing after activity like TKD when he has used it a lot. She told us NOT to use heat at this point.
2. She put kinesio tape (two big X’s) on the top and bottom of his wrist and explained that this should help by lifting the skin and create more space in the joint and also it can act like compression too for support. She said it should last about 2 – 3 days. (BTW – he took it off at school later that day already saying it bothered him!)
3. She showed Zach 4 different exercises to do at home. He is to do them 2-3 times a day only until it hurts and then stop. The goal is to get to 15 reps of each of them. One is to move the hand back, forward, middle. The second is to move it side to side like waving. The third is to bend hand into a fist and then open. The last one is to touch the thumb to each finger.

She had a couple of suggestions for school:
1. Fatter writing implements work better than skinny ones and gel pens might actually work better than pencils since you don’t have to press down as hard. She said we might want to get permission from the teacher to use these.
2. She suggested mentioning to the teacher that Zach might need to take breaks during long writing assignments. She said she could provide paperwork for the school if that would help. I was very appreciative of that because I’m not sure the school really takes it seriously. I have a feeling the whole “it is only arthritis” thing might creep up, although to be fair I have not yet experienced that. Plus, what kid doesn’t get tired from writing at school?! It might just seem like a normal complaint.

Sarah mentioned that since Zach’s arthritis is pretty acute right now (yikes) she recommends therapy once a week. I immediately was concerned about this in terms of Zach missing more school, especially since it is more of a drive than Hudson, but she said she would be able to do like a 4:15pm or 4:30pm so Mike could just pick him up from school to take him. Overall I was very impressed with our visit and with the staff. We even had a visit from “Tank”, a therapy dog who was working with a little girl, and Zach got to give him a cookie after doing his commands! On our way out, as we passed some other children, who had much greater physical concerns than Zachary, doing therapy (walking) in the hallway, I wondered what their stories were and said a prayer for their families and then my own gratitude prayer for all of our blessings too.