Kaci's Third Day at College

Our day started in Grampa’s car on the road at 7:20 a.m. sharp and lasted through being dropped off at 4:00 p.m. at Mommy’s house. After therapy was finished at 2:00 p.m. we had to go visit Grampa’s work to make sure that he really in fact had Nana’s red truck there. I took Grampa’s car because it is a little cheaper to drive to Saginaw, but Kaci prefers riding in Nana’s big red truck, like always.

Kaci did a terrific job again today. She made it the whole 6 hours! She is such a trooper, I cannot believe how hard she works all day long with out any significant argument.
When we arrived at 8, we began immediately working on using “righty” to push the bean bags through the holes as shown in the picture. Of course this was after she had to go visit “everybody”. She has already made many new friends at the college that she needs to check on when she gets there. There are probably about 10 -15 other people who are receiving constraint therapy along with Kaci. She is the first young lady to participate in the program and is a new type of challenge for the students. The others range in age from about 30 to 80. My heart breaks when I see how hard these people have to work to do things that we all take for granted. They want so badly to make their arms work or their fingers pinch together. They just want to be able to snap their own pants or pick up and drink a glass of water. The only difference between them and Kaci is that they know that once they were able to do these things freely.

Kaci got another new cast today as the other one had taken some wear after she had worked herself out of it. They took the other one off and let her run around for a little while until I prodded them to get it back on her. Then they asked her if she wanted to get it back on…..dumb question! I sometimes forget that these are just students, kids themselves really. They have not lived with Kaci and don’t know her limits and potential, like we do. After a little struggle on my lap, another professor came in and read her three books to distract her while they put the new cast on.

Today we went outside for some more variety and Kaci learned how to operate a revolving door. It actually was quite a good pushing exercise for her. She knows her way around the whole two story building that houses the occupational therapy department and now we are starting on all the other surrounding buildings. Now we know what drinking fountains work and what ones don’t, what buttons to press for the elevator, how to wash your hands at the automatic faucet in the bathroom, who she can make stop working in their office, or how many different things she can pick up with her teeth if we are not fast enough! Today rather than pick up a bowling pin with her hands she stuck it between her feet and scooted it across the floor to the therapist. She is such a cheater sometimes. You have to just turn your head and to laugh sometimes.

I am already seeing more automatic response reaching and her hand has relaxed so much more as you can see in the photo of her holding the ball. Most of the time she pushes the wheelchair around using both hands, but in this photo, she suckered the girls into pushing her and holding the doll and ball. I can’t blame her, though as 6 hours a day is a long time for a little girl.

One of the new goals we have now is having her turn her hand over palm up. She currently puts her hand up to her mouth backwards and it needs to turn around. They drew a star on her palm today so that she can practice showing people her star.

In conclusion for today, as always I feel blessed for having our Kaci-girl, but also blessed to have the first-hand opportunity to see how lucky we are to be able to do just the simple things. All our new friends at therapy will be in my thoughts and prayers for recovery from their stroke and Kaci will be there to cheer them on the day that they can put the peg in the hole…….