Update #2

Ellie has had a few appointments in the last two weeks. While we were in the hospital, we weren't able to meet with a speech therapist. Ellie's speech has been our biggest concern regarding her recovery since it seems to be the area in which she has had the slowest return to "normal". The hospital told me that we would have to wait 6 months to a year for an appointment. Thankfully her neurologist at children's gave us a referral which helped us get an evaluation sooner. Monday morning we got the kids up early and sat in rush hour traffic for Ellie's speech therapy evaluation. The evaluation took about an hour and a half and consisted mostly of pictures that Ellie had to identify for the therapist. She also asked her to preform a number of tasks ("The bear is thirsty, can you give the bear a drink?") to test her hearing and interpretation of words. She did really well and the therapist said she was within normal range for a three year old. She didn't have any trouble understanding Ellie and said the few sounds that she is struggling with (especially "s") is completely normal for her age. She doesn't think Ellie needs any speech therapy at this time! A few weeks ago I think we would have had a different result. Her "chatter" and conversation increase daily. While she is not talking as much as she did prior to the stroke, she is starting to talk more while playing and riding in the car. The only thing the therapist recommended was that Ellie have a hearing evaluation. Just to cover all our bases, not cause we suspect anything is wrong. She also noticed that Ellie had some difficulty focusing on the tasks. We have been noticing the same thing at home - she is really "spacey" sometimes and we aren't sure if this is just cause she is three or if it is a side effect of all the chaos lately. So, we are going to keep an eye on this and see if there are any changes in the upcoming weeks and I will bring this up with the neurologist in July.

Also, we had Ellie's vision checked this week - twice! The neurologist recommended that Ellie be seen by an Opthalmologist just to be sure that there aren't any issues with the blood vessels in her eyes. I got a referral from my pediatrician, but the doctor wasn't accepting new patients until December! They referred me to another doctor in their practice and I took Ellie last Thursday. Well, I think the combination of the doctor not being used to children and Ellie being a bit overwhelmed by all her visits lately, the appointment was a complete disaster! It took over two hours and they weren't able to do any of the tests. They were able to get us an appointment with the pediatric opthamologist though, so we went back yesterday. It went much better. She was able to identify all the pictures and only fussed when they did the eye drops. She screamed the first time we tried to do them. I think the big bag of M&Ms mommy brought as motivation helped a bit! Her eyes checked out - her vision is fine and she doesn't seem to have any issues with the blood vessels. She doesn't need any follow-up.

Playing with her pom-poms, her "prize" from the speech therapist. We also went to chick-fil-a twice this week as a reward for being so cooperative during her visits. It was really a reward for mommy too, I really needed a chocolate milkshake after those appointments!