Teeter Totter Toddler

A little up and down news after three long days of medical clinics in the last week: vision, liver and preemie clinics.

The findings?
Liver - status quo unchanged. In other words, it's good news that he doesn't *yet* have portal vein hypertension. Let's wait and see what another year brings.

Eyes - relatively unchanged... less patching of his eye now as the strabismus has started to correct and we aren't to over-correct him. But no, he doesn't need glasses even though he gets right up in all the objects he plays with, and the books he reads. "Some kids just like to hold things close" the doc tell us.

Preemie clinic - these folks like to complicate things a bit... well I'm sure they don't mean to, but that's generally the way it feels when we come out of clinic. They are very impressed with Torran, his temperment and the skills he demonstrated. However, they found "new" problems for us to incorporate into our understanding of our child.

They've newly identified that he has speech apraxia , and some visual isses (the full extent of which I didn't retain but includes lacking visual closure, not engaging all of his fields of vision, and being very close to objects). I'll be getting a full report from them once Canada Post stops their strike, with details of the full assessment. They also verified my concern that unless he is getting his long muscles stretched every day, he will end up with increased tone due to the muscle tightness (i.e. his brain not sending signals to his muscles properly which causes the CP), even though he is very active. The increased tone can be seen, for example, in the bend in his kness: he bicycle kicks when he swims and can't sit with his legs extended by himself, or flex his foot when he does sit on the floor with outstretched legs.

As for the diagnosis of Autism from Bloorview, they didn't challenge it, per se, but they think his is high functioning for a child with Autism. They agreed that he would benefit some some form of one of one speech/social therapy (although the OT was quick to point out that speech apraxia is an organic brain problem for which compensation tools or skills can be used, but cannot be cured through behavioural changes). They added that he is a very medically complicated and his summary of symptoms may not be able to defined adequately by ASD, but by ... something else? The Torran Effect? The Torran Syndrome?

So, after reviewing Torran head to toe, they ensured that he has us "on top" of all his needs (i.e. therapeutic services) and then, that's all, file closed. They aren't funded to follow him beyond three years, although they want to track children (and their researchable data) until school age, or beyond.