Matt has done some amazing things this month.  His left leg has continued to become more active.  The beginning of the month he was just pushing and pushing strong with his left leg.  Now we’re getting the pulling thing going on along with lots of movement with his ankle and toes.  He feels alot.  I kind of think he’s at now with his left leg where he was a year ago with his right.  What we’re doing now is working with getting him to do more controlled smooth movement with his right leg now that he’s shown us all that he has the strength and ability.  He’s getting it but he really has to slow down and think about what we ask him and yes he does understand and does slow down and do what we ask but like I said, he really has to think about it and does what he’s asked.

Matt also went in to the dentist for a cleaning with much thanks to Lindsey for setting it up at her office with Dr Mark Chintala DDS.  Lindsey and her staff set some time aside to give Matt an exam and a cleaning.  All Lindsey could say was how proud she was of Matt.  How he did everything the Dr asked him to do right on que.  He was in and out in just 25 minutes.  The staff commented on how well he did with the exam and couldn’t believe how well he understood and tolerated everything that was asked of him without a problem.

The other thing that Matt has done remarkably well with this past month is therapy in the pool.  It started with Spencer, Lisa and I getting him in the pool and asking Matt to kick.  Guess what, on que he started kicking strong enough to propel himself across the pool.  That’s developed into building a hoist so Lisa and I can now get Matt in and out of the pool safely on our own and that’s just what we are doing.  We’ve developed therapy exercises that we can now do in the pool with Matt, Lisa, Joan and I.  It’s actually fun, he does so well and is so strong, he’s really blowing us all away.  Matthew swims, propelling himself all on his own from one end of the pool to the other.  He will do this up and back over and over again.  When he gets to one end, we turn him back in the other direction and he swims back.

Lisa had him at the Challenge Center today and that’s what their all commenting on is his strength.  He’s sitting up with his head turning from one side to another without any assistance.  Sitting up holding himself up all on his own.  We’re all now talking about how the focus now has to move toward Matt developing more control of his body little by little taking over on his own.

The other big thing that can open up new opportunities is Matt is no longer on Kaiser Permanente insurance.  He’s on what is called Medi/Medi.  That makes available, Scripps rehab, Sharp rehab and even Rancho Los Amigos in Los Angeles.  What we are now doing is setting up a new network of doctors so we can begin the process of evaluations and new therapy programs.

Soon to be attached are photos of Matt in the pool, Matt on the LocoMat walking as he watches on a screen, his movements on a graph that actively measures his input.  It measures his input as spikes on a graph and that’s what he’s doing is working as he makes bigger and bigger spikes and tries to maintain them throughout his session.

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