Parker's journey

Just a quick update on Parker for everyone. We have good news in that Parker has been able to eat soy and we may get to move away from the expensive Neocate formula. If he can deal with soy it could help him gain some muscle. This would be soooo good for him. However, he has been having difficulty chewing solid food (like graham crackers, Cherrios, etc.). We had a speech assessment done and he will be receiving speech and feeding therapy soon. He is behind in his speech sounds and hopefully the speech pathologist can help with his feeding problems.

Last Friday we went to a Neurologist at the suggestion of our Pediatrician. She thought that Parkers difficulties may be related to something neurological. The Neurologist had all of Parkers assessments and said that he has speech Apraxia and ideo-motor Apraxia (I have included a link which describes these things). Basically, Apraxia is a Neurological disorder in which the connections between the brain the body are slowed which affects muscle tone, oral motor skills, fine motor, production of speech sounds, chewing, swallowing, reflexes, and could be the underlying cause for Parker's gastro issues of reflux and constipation. It was an "AHHH" moment when Hyrum and looked at the definition of Apraxia- we said that fits Parker to a tee.

On Friday of this week Parker will have an MRI (they have to put him to sleep) to see just what is going on in his little brain. The doctor will also be looking at if there is underlying Cerebral Palsy caused by damage in the brain. We seriously hope not but both Hyrum and I feel that we still need answers and want to help him as best we can, as early as we can.

We are positive and very confident in our doctors. I will update as soon as we get results. Thank you for everyone's support :)

http://www.cerebralpalsysource.com/Types_of_CP/hypotonic_cp/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apraxia