Enssle Family

The results are in

October 4th, 2006

Our neurologist called yesterday evening and gave us the results of Anna’s MRI.  The MRI confirmed the initial diagnosis - Anna did indeed have a small stroke on the right side of her brain.  We have been referred to the stroke clinic at Children’s.  Hopefully, after our appointment with them we will know a bit more about what may have caused the stroke and the full extent of the damage to Anna’s brain.  We’re waiting for them to call us to set up an appointment.

Meanwhile, we’ve been working with the folks at Imagine!.  Imagine! is a local, private, non-profit organization established in 1963 that provides support services to people with cognitive disabilities (including epilepsy, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and autism).  We’ve been assigned a social worker (she’s wonderful — caring, engaged, efficient, knowledgeable) who is helping us navigate the various national, state, and county-wide support systems for kids with CP.  So far this has been a fantastic experience, and we’re amazed at how fast all this is moving.  Since our initial diagnosis on September 12, we’ve met with our case worker at our house to our many options.  To get the process moving we took Anna for an “interview” with a physical therapist (gross motor), an occupational therapist (fine motor), and a school district nurse (hearing, vision) with the folks at ChildFind on Monday morning.  (ChildFind is a national screening and evaluation program “designed to locate, identify, and refer as early as possible all young children with disabilities and their families who are in need of Early Intervention Program (Part C) or Preschool Special Education (Part B/619) services of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)“).  After her interview we were told that Anna’s been approved for both PT and OT, and that the next step would be to locate physical and occupational therapists to work with Anna.

Well, last night (just a day later!) we learned that our Imagine! social worker sent us an email:

I have located therapists that have availability through an agency called Tiny Tim Therapeutic Outreach. This is a program in Longmont that serves children birth to three and beyond. They have a developmental preschool program as well.  I have several families using their services and have been very happy. I am planning to get all the information to them by this Friday so they can hopefully be ready to start the week of [October] 16th.

We couldn’t be happier.  Tara had already heard about Tiny Tim from the director of our daycare (Sunset Academy).  Tiny Tim is located literally around the corner from Sunset, and there are kids from Sunset who spend afternoons at Tiny Tim.  And so it turns out that the directors of both facilities are good friends who’ve worked together for years.  We’re hoping that Anna will be able to enroll in the Tiny Tim daycare when she gets to be about three years old if she still needs help at that point.

All in all we think this is great news. The MRI confirmed the initial diagnosis, and while there’s more to learn on that front it’s still good to know what we’re dealing with.  Meanwhile, with the help of the folks at Imagine! we’ve been able to start to navigate the support systems available to Anna, and to get moving on the path of therapy.

Therapy, we feel, is the key. Even just working with Anna ourselves we’ve seen such enormous improvement in her motor skills over the past few weeks and months, and we’re eager to get her paired up with some professionals who can show us how to do this right.

Moreover, it’s been great to get confirmation from our doctors, our social worker, and the therapists at ChildFind that Anna is developmentally “on track” in all other areas (and even ahead of the game in some areas like social skills).  At a time like this it’s been important to get some confirmation of what we, as parents, already believe: That despite some relatively minor problems with her left side, she’s a healthy, happy, bright, curious, active, engaging, wonderful little girl.

Entry Filed under: Parenting, Babies, Health