Session 11 of HBOT with Sevyn
(diagnosis autism age 3)
6-26-09
Today we fallowed yet another Olympic athlete in the hyperbaric chamber! Very cool! Sevyn jumped right into the chamber, but was really wanting to talk into the PSI meter like it was a microphone and I struggled a little bit with getting him to sit down so we could zip up and start compression. After yesterdays very promising Play Study with Marisa and my own successful skill time session with Sevyn, I decided to try going without the DVD player today. We sat at the observation window at the end of the chamber together and calmly sang and toned through the compression. We took it a little slow and he did really well. He’s been drinking water from a pop top sports bottle and that helps with popping his ears along with eating fruit leathers and singing. Dr. Matt’s assistant guided us through compression nicely today and came back to check on us regularly while Dr. Matt saw his patients. Shortly after we reached full compression Sevyn was telling me a story about space and I decided to try to film him since he was being so articulate. Well he snatched my camera right out of my hands. He’s never really cared about it before and I take lots of pictures of him. It seemed to me like he had just noticed it for the first time. He preceded to take photographs of me and the entire chamber for the rest of the hour! He was very focused and I was even able to get involved. I asked him to take a picture of me and he did! I posed by his feet and he took the picture when I smiled but not when I was frowning! I asked him to take a picture of my hand while holding it next to my foot and he carefully photographed my hand. Then I asked him to take a picture of himself and he photographed his foot and said "foot" then his knee and said "knee". Next he took some shots of the zipper and the pressure valve and said “not a choice” to me when we looked at the pics together!! I was in awe! He also photographed the windows in the chamber and was disappointed when he noticed that the stars had fallen from the side of the chamber saying “stars broken” and "all gone"with a sad face. Such amazing observations! He didn’t ask about Sponge Bob once throughout the session and was completely engaged and attentive to the activity of taking pictures with the camera and examining them. He labeled his hair, eyes, ears, nose, mouth , teeth , and shirt for me using a photograph he took of himself!!!! He also said his name several times when I asked him who the boy in the pictures was! "Seben!" When we came home today Sevyn was quite calm. He helped me water the plants outside and even helped make dinner. He’s very interested in what I’m up to these days and comes up to me often to “check in” like never before. He’ll say “hey mom” and just give me a big hug! Oh, and today his father and I were folding laundry and he came into the room and said “babee Grey -TV!” in an urgent voice. Sure enough Grey had climbed our entertainment center and was messing with the TV! Sevyn told on his brother! He observed something that he knew was bad happening and came and let the adults know about it!! We are so proud of him!!! His diapers are looking better today. More formed poop and more of it, a little mucus and runny parts, but we started him back on the Slippery Elm and that should help. His sleeping was quite broken last night, but overall is definitely improving. Everyone benefits from him resting!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Session Ten 6-25-09
Session 10 of HBOT with Sevyn
(diagnosis autism age 3)
6-25-09
Today a wonderful teacher from Sevyn’s early intervention program stopped by. Marisa worked with Sevyn in the toddler program when he was first diagnosed at 27 months old and also worked with him recently as a substitute in his current classroom. She is doing a play study with the university and wanted to include us. We love this teacher and have done a project with her before that was a lot of fun and helped Sevyn learn. I love the concepts of this study and the idea of teaching him how to play. I’m also very happy about it because we are video taping the sessions. It’s just more data on Sevyn’s progress! So today’s session with Marisa was really impressive! Despite her skepticism regarding autism recovery, she said that Sevyn’s attending skills had obviously improved quite a lot since last time she saw him and that he seemed much more focused. She also noted how he was more comfortable in his skin and that he was making eye contact much more. He used some of his new language skills with her and showed us some very interesting play behaviors. The study is described as “Least Prompts and Contingent Imitation to Increase the Frequency and Diversity of Play and Language Behaviors” and today’s session was all about observing Sevyn at play with different sets of objects- the same sets will be used throughout the study. Marisa uses the study’s theory of Contingent Imitation ( Adult contingent imitation has been used successfully to obtain the attention of children with disabilities. Contingent imitation is when the adult simultaneously imitates the child’s motor action with the same or similar object. The object sets will have duplicates of objects to facilitate contingent imitation. Contingent imitation will be used to obtain the child’s attention. Contingent imitation can last several seconds. The teacher should use contingent imitation to build a play interaction and to determine which play behaviors is appropriate to model and prompt.) at this stage and it seems to be quite effective and entertaining for Sevyn. I sat and watched them play, noting how engaged he was with her, how focused, present and attentive he was almost the entire time…it was just beautiful! He did a lot of stacking, throwing, scattering, and rolling on the different playsets. He really doesn't know how to play. The skills from this study should help him learn to socialize better! It is fascinating for me to see a teacher simply sit on the floor and imitate/play with him like this. It's so different from the model of interaction used at his school. We were filming Sevyn playing with each set of toys for five minutes so Marisa can take data from the footage later on. For me this footage is great evidence of his progress! When Marisa completes the study I'll post a video with the clips from the sessions!
The HBOT session today was at 4:50 because of the study and the busy chamber! Apparently some of the worlds greatest Olympic athletes were in town and needed HBOT too! One of those athletes was a famous, Silver and Gold Medal winning Olympian! He was using the hyperbaric chamber for an injury he sustained while practicing. I thought it was really cool that we were sharing that healing space with such talented people! I’ll tell Sevyn when he’s older for sure! Today was nice, relaxing and pretty calm in the chamber. Going in was fine, Sevyn jumped right in and was really good during the compression. He is getting better and better about popping his ears and listening to me when I try to help him through the compression and decompression. Sevyn wore the oxygen mask like a necklace again and was happy to watch a cartoon. Instead of his usual zombie like state while watching a cartoon (prior to starting HBOT), he told me all about it. I heard a lot of words and names of characters in his story from the cartoon. I love being able to understand more of what he’s telling me. He was very focused today, no compulsive checking of the windows in the chamber or moving from one end to the other. He did look at the stars outside the window and spontaneously say "earth"! He left the knobs, valves, and zippers alone and was easy to manage. We were able to stay put the whole time. When the session was finished he popped out of the chamber and shouted “we did it!” again! At home he ate well today and did about 25 minutes of ABA skill time with me and read through a short dinosaur counting book. He pointed and counted from 1 to 10 with me on several pages! His focus and attentiveness is improving everyday! He seems constipated so we’ve been pushing the greens and lots of water with him, today’s diapers consisted of some really bad smelling pee and pebbles of poop. No rash though and hopefully we can get him back to going regularly at least once a day if not twice! A great primer on stool can be found in this article Dr. Matt gave me a link to http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/lifetimes/article/659326This was our 10th session! We are so happy that we haven’t seen any staring spells or seizure like activity since starting the HBOT! His co ordination seems improved too-his dad was just noticing how he has not seen him falling down or tripping over his own feet much at all lately! We have been seeing so much more of his face because he's actually making eye contact with us! He seems much more comfortable too! No light or noise sensitivities that we can tell, other than demanding to listen to music! He is doing so much better over all, and so am I for having done the sessions with him! Everyone in our house is sleeping better, eating healthier, and living happier now and this is only session 10!
(diagnosis autism age 3)
6-25-09
Today a wonderful teacher from Sevyn’s early intervention program stopped by. Marisa worked with Sevyn in the toddler program when he was first diagnosed at 27 months old and also worked with him recently as a substitute in his current classroom. She is doing a play study with the university and wanted to include us. We love this teacher and have done a project with her before that was a lot of fun and helped Sevyn learn. I love the concepts of this study and the idea of teaching him how to play. I’m also very happy about it because we are video taping the sessions. It’s just more data on Sevyn’s progress! So today’s session with Marisa was really impressive! Despite her skepticism regarding autism recovery, she said that Sevyn’s attending skills had obviously improved quite a lot since last time she saw him and that he seemed much more focused. She also noted how he was more comfortable in his skin and that he was making eye contact much more. He used some of his new language skills with her and showed us some very interesting play behaviors. The study is described as “Least Prompts and Contingent Imitation to Increase the Frequency and Diversity of Play and Language Behaviors” and today’s session was all about observing Sevyn at play with different sets of objects- the same sets will be used throughout the study. Marisa uses the study’s theory of Contingent Imitation ( Adult contingent imitation has been used successfully to obtain the attention of children with disabilities. Contingent imitation is when the adult simultaneously imitates the child’s motor action with the same or similar object. The object sets will have duplicates of objects to facilitate contingent imitation. Contingent imitation will be used to obtain the child’s attention. Contingent imitation can last several seconds. The teacher should use contingent imitation to build a play interaction and to determine which play behaviors is appropriate to model and prompt.) at this stage and it seems to be quite effective and entertaining for Sevyn. I sat and watched them play, noting how engaged he was with her, how focused, present and attentive he was almost the entire time…it was just beautiful! He did a lot of stacking, throwing, scattering, and rolling on the different playsets. He really doesn't know how to play. The skills from this study should help him learn to socialize better! It is fascinating for me to see a teacher simply sit on the floor and imitate/play with him like this. It's so different from the model of interaction used at his school. We were filming Sevyn playing with each set of toys for five minutes so Marisa can take data from the footage later on. For me this footage is great evidence of his progress! When Marisa completes the study I'll post a video with the clips from the sessions!
The HBOT session today was at 4:50 because of the study and the busy chamber! Apparently some of the worlds greatest Olympic athletes were in town and needed HBOT too! One of those athletes was a famous, Silver and Gold Medal winning Olympian! He was using the hyperbaric chamber for an injury he sustained while practicing. I thought it was really cool that we were sharing that healing space with such talented people! I’ll tell Sevyn when he’s older for sure! Today was nice, relaxing and pretty calm in the chamber. Going in was fine, Sevyn jumped right in and was really good during the compression. He is getting better and better about popping his ears and listening to me when I try to help him through the compression and decompression. Sevyn wore the oxygen mask like a necklace again and was happy to watch a cartoon. Instead of his usual zombie like state while watching a cartoon (prior to starting HBOT), he told me all about it. I heard a lot of words and names of characters in his story from the cartoon. I love being able to understand more of what he’s telling me. He was very focused today, no compulsive checking of the windows in the chamber or moving from one end to the other. He did look at the stars outside the window and spontaneously say "earth"! He left the knobs, valves, and zippers alone and was easy to manage. We were able to stay put the whole time. When the session was finished he popped out of the chamber and shouted “we did it!” again! At home he ate well today and did about 25 minutes of ABA skill time with me and read through a short dinosaur counting book. He pointed and counted from 1 to 10 with me on several pages! His focus and attentiveness is improving everyday! He seems constipated so we’ve been pushing the greens and lots of water with him, today’s diapers consisted of some really bad smelling pee and pebbles of poop. No rash though and hopefully we can get him back to going regularly at least once a day if not twice! A great primer on stool can be found in this article Dr. Matt gave me a link to http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/lifetimes/article/659326This was our 10th session! We are so happy that we haven’t seen any staring spells or seizure like activity since starting the HBOT! His co ordination seems improved too-his dad was just noticing how he has not seen him falling down or tripping over his own feet much at all lately! We have been seeing so much more of his face because he's actually making eye contact with us! He seems much more comfortable too! No light or noise sensitivities that we can tell, other than demanding to listen to music! He is doing so much better over all, and so am I for having done the sessions with him! Everyone in our house is sleeping better, eating healthier, and living happier now and this is only session 10!
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