Day 7: Children's Hospital PT and OT

Shelves, closets, even drawers full of toys, silly putty, bikes, PLUS really nice doctors... The Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Department at Children's Hospital was kid heaven. Again, I was struck by the importance of this kind of rehabilitation, where the muscles and the brain need to be taught to work together. This department was very special, because it did so through play.


The first patient I saw was a little Asian boy (probably around 4 years old) who had had a stroke when he was baby and had lost some of the function on the left side of his body. He was being taught to use his left hand to hold on to things again. The simplest of tasks were difficult for him to do, and he relied heavily on his right hand for everything. But the doctor brought out the toys and made him use his left hand to play. Although he was a little testy, he started using his left hand, and began "pinching" things between his thumb and index finger in order to hold them. His favorite and most difficult activity was playing with rubber toys in water. The way they got him to pinch was to allow him to fill the toys up with water with his right hand, but ask him to squirt the water out with his left. In order for the water to come out, he had to apply force, which he didn't have quite yet, but he was getting more comfortable using his hand (which the doctor told me a year ago he wouldn't use AT ALL).


Another patient I saw was this charming little 16 month old toddler who had severe low muscle tone (his muscles were very weak). The doctor told me the aim was to get him to stand on his own for about 4-5 seconds, which he did very well. Again, this was done while playing. His toys were put on a little bench, which forced him to prop himself up and keep his balance using his legs muscles. I noticed he was very, very good at crawling, and the doctor told me that was a very big improvement, because normally kids with such weak muscles tend to just slide on their butts to get to where they need to. But this strong little baby (who also had some vertebrae missing in his neck) didn't let anything stop him. He propped himself up, spun around, sat down to rest, stumbled to his mama, and played for about 45 minutes. And when it was time to go he flopped his wrist up and down and flashed a huge smile to say goodbye.


I really liked being in Children's simply because I loved interacting with kids. It was amazing to learn how much the children had improved and how much the therapy was helping with their day-to-day lives. It was also very inspiring to see these children with such wonderful personalities work through their struggles. Next time I feel like saying "I can't" ill try to remember that if these children can regain their abilities, I can also work to get better.