Playing 'Ketchup'

First off, surgery negotiations with the providers and insurance company are still in progress and looking positive.  It’s almost a full time job for Rachel dealing with all this, especially when certain provider’s staff don’t feel like they’re giving it much effort at all.  I guess we can expect some of that since we 'choose' to go to Dallas because of what some of the Doctors here in Atlanta did and were saying they were going to do, but to us its not really a choice.  Unlike 4 years ago Rachel is working now, albeit part time, but it eats up a bunch of time and is making her worried about having enough time to ready her mind for the surgery.  I don’t know if you ever can really get yourself psyched up for these things.  I think you can only try to clear your mind of everything else that gets in the way, but even that’s difficult at times.  We’ve been lucky to have a very supportive family and since we’ve finally found a home church here in Atlanta as of May 2012 it’s been a blessing to have extra prayers and support by way of our community group.

Looking back at the gaps in the blog it’s amazing to think about how much has changed with Isaiah in the last year or so.  As they happen they mostly seem so small and incremental that we don’t notice, but looking back compared to the snippets I’ve written he’s leaps and bound above where he was.  His speech is vastly improved.  He still gets speech therapy twice weekly but he’s getting clearer and easier to understand.  L’s and hard G’s still take some effort for him to say right, but he usually gets it on a second or third try.  His motor skills are doing well too.  He doesn’t even get Physical Therapy anymore for gross movement, but we're doing a good amount of OT still for his fine motor skills.  We still deal with getting him dressed as he still has difficulty getting shirts over his head and small buttons.  He can do zippers, but still has issues lining them up to start.  He's been able to pull up his undies and pants if they're elastic which means most of the time he can handle the bathroom by himself now too. They're even working on printing in school right now which has been going pretty well too.  Other than the physical stuff, he's only a bit delayed compared to normal kindergarteners but he's not too far off the curve.  They're even talking about transitioning him to the inclusion kindergarten class from the Autism room, but we need to see how he responds after the surgery first.

That's it for now...