Day 442 – Grayson’s Journey

Dear family and friends

Today it was back to the regular week – work for Regina and me, and the clinic for Grayson. Grayson had a good day at the clinic, including a fair amount of Southern California sunshine! For physical therapy today they played some kickball outside as a group. In his cognitive rehab, or speech therapy, he worked on the computer for a bit, did some exercises in the Dynavision room, and worked in the sensory room.

If you have seen Grayson in the past 9 months or so, you will notice that when sensory input increases, Grayson tends to scratch his head. The greater the sensory input, input such as noise, touching, excitement, laughter, etc., the more he scratches. When he needs to summon cognitive energy, such as tying his shoes, trying to write something, or trying to answer a question, he almost immediately starts scratching his head. Sometimes he just scratches instead of accomplishing anything. In the sensory room, they are working to have him tolerate greater amounts of sensory input. They will have him sit quietly and brush his hand or sit in a massage chair then ask questions to build up a tolerance to the sensory input so he is able to function.

Grayson was my grocery shopping buddy tonight as we did the marketing for the week. On the way home I asked him if it was fun, and he said "No!" He did allow that eating the food was fun, so we agreed that the effort to acquire the food was worth it!

Pax!

Brant