A Light In The Middle Of The Tunnel

Jordan had a busy day of therapies today. They ganged up on her, in fact. Whitney came for physical therapy, and says that her left-side neck muscles are much more relaxed & flexible, so our exercises must be working*. Miss Sarah also was here, busy with her education, which is to say, playing with toys & textures (awesome school, eh!?).

And new to the team, Cindy, from the Washington State School for the Blind, was here for her assessment of Jordan's vision. We've always known she has some amount of vision impairment, but we really don't have a grasp on how much. Today, however, Cindy set the stage to see what she could do, and she surprised even me! When presented with a red bell against a black background, she eventually reached for it, with both hands. I was amazed & impressed.

With Cortical vision impairment, the problem is not with the eyes themselves, but with the brain processing what the eyes see. So, as with any other brain processing function, vision can actually be learned, given a proper education. Some things we will do are:

• 1. Cut out clutter. That means using a black background to block out all the other "distractions" that can confuse the brain, and allowing it to focus on one thing at a time. Included in the distraction can be noise, touch, & taste as well, so vision therapy should be quiet & focused time for her.
• 2. Keep objects at ~18 inches from her eyes, similar to that of a newborns.
• 3. Let her eyes look at a single object for up to 20 minutes, to "learn" what the object looks like. Don't take it away if she averts her eyes for awhile, that's common, and starting out she might not look at it very much at all (like with the bell that she was reaching for!)
• 4. Focus on colors she seems to respond to. We've learned by trial & error with balloons that she prefers red so far, but we do have some silver mylar (crunch when she touches it, so good feedback) and a spinning light globe (but I'm scared of that for fear of breakthrough seizures, so I think we'll stay away from lights as much as possible)
• 5. Use objects that have meaning in life. That means that a toothbrush is a better object to work on than a toy, because a toothbrush has a function & a meaning that will last a lifetime, whereas toys will come & toys will go. If a person can only learn to look at and identify a certain number of objects in a lifetime, it's best to learn useful ones.
• 6. Adapt the environment to fit her, not fit her into a certain environment to learn to see. Time for a new building project for Devon -- a "little room" that will have things hanging from it for her to learn to see. (I can't find any good pics on the internet, so you'll just have to check back in a few weeks to see what we've come up with).

I was so busy watching all of this today that I completely forgot to get the Flip Video out, or even the camera for that matter. Next time, if I remember! Then you can see it too!


*She has such a right-side preference that her neck was getting "stuck" on that side, so we've been exercising her muscles to keep her head moving side-to-side.