You've got to be Tough

Working with Ash isn't all fun and games as our new speech therapist found out today. Ashley Kate cried the WHOLE time and was completely unreasonable. I'm not sure that our therapist was prepared for what she got. On Tuesday when she came to do the evaluation Ash was so sweet. A little nervous, but sweet, sweet, sweet. She allowed the therapist to sit with her on her pallet and play with her toys. Today...she wasn't having it. I was almost embarrassed by her behaviour, but then again Ash has a right to be a little less trusting of strangers than most children. I guess our new therapist is going to try and tough it out because we scheduled two more session for next week.

Ash also needs some occupational therapy, so it looks like we will be meeting with another new therapist next week as well. Eventually I hope to wear Ashley down and have her accept that people are always going to be around. I am hoping that in addition to developing some of those missing milestones that Ash might eventually begin to trust a few people in the process.

To be completely honest Ash has never really had an opportunity to receive consistent therapy because of illness. Our PT, Mrs. Sue has always been with us. Even before transplant when Ash was tiny and weak and literally dying because of her diseased liver, but therapy was only possible every once in a while when she was feeling up to it. This will be our first time to bring in speech and occupational therapy along with her physical therapy. We are going to give it an honest shot, but if things don't improve and she remains hysterical then Dave and I will just continue to work with Ash along with Mrs. Sue. Our hopes for Ash are that we will eventually be able to have our speech therapist begin feeding therapy with Ashley. That is our main reason for bringing in the new therapist. We desperately want Ash to learn to eat by mouth so that some day we might be able to rid her of the feeding pumps and mickey buttons. What a blessing that would be.

As things stand now we have some type of therapy scheduled every day of the week. Some days we will have two different types in the same day. Surely Ash will adjust to these women and surely she will not scream every time they approach once she learns they aren't going to cause her any pain.

So my prayer is that our therapist will learn to be just as tough as Ash is and that they will grow to love her as much as I know Mrs. Sue does(even though Ash is her worst patient EVER!). Ash is just too cute not fall in love with , don't you think?

Anyway, it was a rough one and we ran her daddy out of the house for a second day in a row. This man isn't even close to be as tough as that little pickle. He just wants to scoop her up and make her smile, but he knows the struggle will some day be worth it. He just can't watch it.

Hope you all had a good day. Goodnight and God bless. Trish