One of Nathan’s problems is that he has dystonia. In a nutshell, what it means is that whatever he wants to do when it comes to movement, his body does the exact opossite. So if he wants to reach out to grab a toy, instead his arm retracts closer to his body and becomes even tighter. The more he consciously tries to open his hands, the tighter he closes them, so you almost can’t pry them open. If he wants to put his hands on the floor when he is in crawling position, he ends up with his arms tight against his body.
At the CP conference in St. Louis they talked about a drug called Sinemet, which is used to treat Dystonia. But as the list of side effects is very long, there’s no way I’d consider trying it.
So today we saw Dr. Kenny and I asker her if there was anything we could do to naturally supplement this drug. She’s agreed to see what we can do to increase his production of L.Dopa, which his body then transforms into Dopamine (which is what’s lacking in dystonia). She gave him a B3 supplement (the same one I’m on!) to see if that’ll help him create more dopamine without needing medication.
On a wonderful note, today Nathan “callibrated” at 999! That means he is pretty much perfectly healthy! No viruses, infections, fungi, imbalances, emotional disturbances… he is feeling physically and emotionally strong! It was exciting to hear.
Tomorrow Nathan starts a 2 week suit therapy intensive at Napa Center. We are going to teach them how to do his Medek exercises so they can do them while at the Center. I am excited about this because I think he will do Medek much better in a room full of people and other kids. Then they will put him in the suit and work with him for another little while. Then we’ll do the 2nd Medek session at home.
I am excited to see how this works for Nathan. He enjoys being at Napa tremendously because of all the other kids and people. He works hard when he’s there. So we figured we’d put him in that setting to see if we can get him to work even harder. I’ll take some pictures tommorrow and post – I promise!
So that’s al for today… Now back to Outlander 🙂