Happy Easter
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
Hope everybody had an enjoyable Easter. Gareth certainly enjoyed his gifts from various relatives and a certain anthropomorphic rabbit.
Gareth’s week leading up to Easter was pretty busy. We headed to Pittsburgh on Tuesday night for a hotel stay before attending a CP clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. If you’ve never been to Pittsburgh and you think “Oh, our hotel is only two blocks from the hospital. We don’t need to leave early to get to our appointment”, think again. I just about had us lost at one point thanks to confusing signs regarding parking and the usual downtown one-way streets.
We spent just over seven hours meeting with folks and taking x-rays. At the end of it all, the only suggestions were that we get Gareth a larger Pony Walker and potentially put him on medication that has a history of causing mood alterations and other nasty side effects. All in all, it was a day wasted. We are now left to debate whether or not it is worth it to make a return trip for a followup in six months.
One good thing that came out of it was that we got a bit of a lead on a children’s institute in the Pittsburgh area where Gareth can be admitted to an inpatient program that will let him try out a wide variety of adaptive hardware (walkers, wheelchairs, seats, et cetera). That could definitely be of benefit since it is typically painful to try out new hardware through local resellers.
Gareth has had his bedroom swapped and redesigned. We came to the conclusion that he no longer required the master bedroom, so we exercised our right of parental domination and moved Gareth to the smaller bedroom that we have inhabited for the past three years. In order to soften the blow, Gareth got to pick the new color for his room (blue) and decorate the entire room with characters from the movie Cars. He’s happy, and we don’t automatically hit the wall when we roll out of bed in the morning.
Preparations continue for Gareth’s transition to kindergarten, including the upcoming purchase of a second car that is wheelchair capable so that I can drive Gareth to school in the morning and Brandy can pick him up in the afternoon. That’s the easy part. The hard part is getting the school to figure out a way that Gareth can traverse the steps that lead into the cafeteria/gym/auditorium.