Morgan is my 7 year old daughter who is affected by spasticity. She was the 2nd born of twins, but got stuck during delivery and had a difficult birth. We didn’t know her diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy until she was a year old, but already had her involved in physical therapy through ECI. Her therapist recommended Hippotherapy, which bothered me because I had always been afraid of horses, so it took courage for me to ride on the horse with her. But now I’m so glad I did because it is one of her best therapies, where she gains balance, upper body strength, and the ability to feel what a normal gait is. Her achievements with Hippotherapy have made me proud and I’m glad that I had the courage to pursue it. But I’m not the only one who has courage.
I would say that Morgan is courageous when she receives her Botox injections every 3-4 months. She has 12-14 shots each time, but we wouldn’t put her through it if it didn’t work. Because Morgan cannot express herself through words, we still know the courage she has in order to go through this procedure. Through other signals she gives us, like the tenseness in her jaws and arms and the fear seen through her eyes, we know she is not doing this because she enjoys it. But we also know it’s worth the “trouble” when we observe her later in the day and see those hands dropped down by her side when sitting and see how relaxed her face looks as a result of having the process be over. She’ll probably never be able to tell us every feeling she has, but we look up to her when we are going through some pretty “difficult” times with something, knowing that she’s had to endure a lot more than we’ll ever know.
She has come a long way in her struggles with spasticity, from taking oral Baclofen to wearing AFO’s. She has undergone a great deal at such a tender age, and we only hope that she will continue to improve and benefit from the treatments, equipment and therapy that she gets including playing in her stander, walking in her gait trainer and swimming, swinging, and skating with her family and friends.
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