10Mar08 - Scotson Home Therapy

It has been a really good week for Lucy and she has been back to her old self. Even the cat has noticed how relaxed Lucy has been.It is just what we wanted as this week we are again learning new therapy exercises as part of the Scotson Advance Centre's (www.advancentre.org.uk) on-going treatment. For this week one of their therapists offered to travel to us and teach us at home, saving us the expense and hassle of traveling all the way to East Grinstead. We are sharing the cost with our friends Hayley and Paul who also do the therapy on their daughter Laila.The therapist Janos will be staying with us until Thursday giving us all plenty of time to learn and practice the new exercises. As usual on the first day we were introduced to a completely new set of exercises which can be quite daunting at first. However once you have repeated them a few times and get used to the sequence and the rhythm, it becomes easier. I am sure that by the time Janos leaves on Thursday they will be second nature and we will be able to do them without constantly referring to the notes. Lucy and Laila were both very well behaved and didn't complain at all while we fumbled around trying to get it right.The exercises we have to learn consist of five sets of different exercises, two on the front and three on the back. Lucy has always been tolerant of the exercises on her front as she likes to lie on her back, but she really dislikes lying on her front so the three sets of exercise on her back are going to be more difficult. At the end of the session today we started on the first of the back exercises which involves working on her back and head simultaneously. She didn't like this very much at all and she squirmed around like an eel. Hopefully through doing it every day she will learn to tolerate it more.In addition to the exercise therapy at the clinic, Lucy and Laila would normally also have hyperbaric oxygen therapy in the clinic's own oxygen chamber. It is a shame that we can't find a similar facility a bit closer to home that we could use but we will have to wait until we go to the clinic again. I am sure Lucy is pleased though because she never likes the oxygen therapy. It has made a big difference having Janos here with us as we have cut out all the travel to and from the clinic each day. We don't have to worry about packing up Lucy's food etc every day and overall it is so much more relaxed. If it wasn't for the clinic's progress assessments and the oxygen therapy, this is definitely the way to do it.