1 year + 204 days

Posted on: 18/10/2015

Ava has made a very enthusiastic return to school following our trip to Milan. Dr Biffi has always maintained that being amongst her peers and being mentally challenged to keep up is one of the best things to aid Ava's recovery. We have certainly seen evidence of this over the past 2 weeks, when her very upbeat mood has been noticed by many and her teaching assistant has made several comments about what great work she has been doing. We have also had a slight change in the focus of our therapy, which I think has also helped give Ava a boost. The neurologist and physiotherapist in Milan both felt it important that our therapy is centred less around strengthening exercises and more around functional movements. So we are now adopting a different approach, whereby Ava is practicing movements and transfers like lying down to sitting up; sitting cross-legged to kneeling; lying prone to standing up. Some of these movements are not straight forward for Ava, however we finding that they are already becoming more fluid after just a couple of weeks practice. We have scrapped the word 'exercise', which I think also helps! Ava's swimming teacher Musa is also following advice from Milan and mainly concentrating on walking in the water, which may sound dull, but is actually great fun for Ava as he always makes up a great story as they make their way up and down the pool. I hope that this new direction is the right one for Ava, she certainly seems happier with it.