We celebrated Keaton’s bday at my parent’s house this year, since his birthday is so close to Christmas. He insisted on having a pinata. I think he had a lot of fun with all his cousins there to share his birthday with him. Keaton is now 4 years old, and is very excited to be 4. Keaton has already had a pretty rough life, but you wouldn’t be able to tell because of how happy he is. His story is a pretty crazy one. When he was 5 months old I noticed he wouldn’t use his left hand….hence the picture where is only swinging at the pinata with his right hand. After seeing way too many doctors and a lot of stress we found out he had a cyst on the right side of his brain, which his neurologist seemed to think was caused by a stroke before he was born. He has left hemiplegia/cerebral palsy. He is always going to the physical/occupational therapy and he sees tons of other doctors, too. But, so far everyone seems to be happy with how well he is doing. He runs and plays and wrestles his brothers, and is just as crazy as any other little boy I’ve ever seen. He just had some more appointments after the Christmas break, and they were all good. Before we went to these appointments his eye doctor thought he was going to need eye surgery again, but they tried another prescription in his glasses and so far his glasses are working, so that was really good news. Then, his physical therapist was becoming alarmed at how tight his little ankle was getting, so she sent us to see an orthopedic specialist, and he told us he doesn’t need surgery yet and we are supposed to help him strengthen the muscles on the outside of his leg. So, we asked how we could do that, and the doctor told us lots of hiking….which isn’t really possible right now or he told us the Wii has some games with this balance board that would help strengthen that part of his leg. So, we ended up getting a Wii, and we are finding games that will help him strengthen his leg. All in all, the appointments turned out to be good….mostly because I wanted a Wii anyways….ha ha ha. But, this summer hopefully we can go on lots of hikes, and help him. If he can get his leg stronger, he might be able to avoid surgery. I guess we’ll see what happens. This specialist did tell us we might want to go to see another doctor about Keaton’s hand. His hand is also pretty tight, but I just can’t even think about more doc appointments right now. Maybe in a few months when I’m not so burned out on doctor’s offices. We will go see the ortho again in a year just to see how Keaton is doing. The ortho even told us he doesn’t need to wear his brace during the day. He just said at night he really needs to wear his leg brace to keep his foot from pointing downwards. So yeah, it all sounded pretty good to me. Now the plan is to work with Keaton as much as possible to strengthen his leg and arm. And, sadly this is a lot of Keaton’s life. Sometimes he really hates all the appointments we go to, and lately he’s been getting really mad about it. I don’t blame him. But, he is a trooper, and a fun little kid to be around. He’s our little super hero. He loves wearing his superman cape, and I love it, too. He flies all over our house protecting us from all the “bad guys.”

Posted on January 9