In Which We Have A Busy Day

Today was an extraordinarily busy day for us, so it was lucky that Connor seemed mostly recovered.  Of course he was still a bit cranky because for some reason he stayed up literally all night last night, but with all the sleep he'd been indulging in earlier in the week that's perhaps not a surprising turn of events.

We started off the morning with Connor dunking one of his hearing aids in my glass of milk.  At least it wasn't tea this time-- he does manage to dip his hearing aids into my beverages rather too often for it to be entirely coincidence.  So he went without his hearing aids today as his left one was drying out and he refuses to wear one without the other.

After that diverting adventure we were off to the hospital for Connor's first appointment of the day: his ankle-foot orthotic (AFO) casting.  The little guy was surprisingly patient with the two women who placed his feet on wooden bases cut to his size, used gauze strips dipped in plaster of Paris to fit the boards to the contours of his arches and then wrapped his feet from toes to midcalf in a cast, which quickly hardened.  Then they carefully scrapped a groove down either side with a razor and used medical scissors to cut his feet out of the casts, which were then put back together and covered with another layer of plaster of Paris.  These will be used to make molds of his feet so that they are able to design his AFOs to his exact size.  He'll have his first fitting for the resulting orthotics in about two weeks.

We took a short break for lunch and then returned to the hospital for Connor's second appointment of the day, to discuss wheelchair, bathing and commode chair options for Connor.  His current wheelchair doesn't give his back enough support but otherwise suits our needs very well.  Luckily the manufacturer also makes a wheelchair seat for the same frame with a hard back rather than the flexible one we have now.  That way we don't have to replace his whole chair; just the actual seating portion. 

We'll also be requesting larger sizes of his commode chair and his bathing chair, both of which he is rapidly outgrowing.  We're hoping to add wheeled bases to both of these so that we can use Connor's lift (once we have the lift) to get him into them and then move him into the bathroom already in his equipment.  The little guy-- or not-so-little guy, as the case may be-- is getting heavy enough now that my back is not going to appreciate me hauling him around the house very much longer, so a lift will be a huge help.

After that appointment we took another short break and it was on to physical therapy, where Connor spent a whole lot of time not really wanting to work on anything.  He was understandably a bit tired after the busy day we'd had and his sleep strike the night before.  He lasted the full hour but was literally shaking with exhaustion by the time we finished, and he fell asleep in the car on the way home.  Of course he's awake now and shows no signs of going back to sleep, but I really hope he gets a bit more than he did last night or he won't have a good time at school tomorrow.

Go to bed, little guy!

~Jess