Well, a typical day for Maeve
involves a lot of therapies
You know, typically she wakes up after a good night's sleep.
She sleeps eleven or twelve hours.
She gets some respiratory treatments early in the morning to help her clear out
her lungs after a long night of sleep.
And then, you know, a physical therapist could arrive at eleven am to do a thirty-minute session
with her
where she could be doing a range of motion exercises with her,
trunk strengthening, head control strengthening, arm strengthening
and there's overlap with the occupational therapist as well
where -- and they work in tandem.
They know what
they're doing, each person is doing, each therapist is doing.
So that Maeve gets the maximum benefit from the therapies.
So some days she has
physical therapy for thirty minutes.
She would rest then she would have thirty minutes occupational therapy,
she would rest,
and then she would have thirty minute speech therapy.
She naps,
nice long nap in the afternoon
for two or three hours. On the vent.
Whenever she's sleeping she's -- On her BiPAP machine, yeah.
And she gets -- she watches TV, she has her favorite programs, she will you which program she
wants to watch.
She will tell you what books she wants to read.
She'll tell you what toys she'd like to play with.
She'll said please.
She'll say thank you.
She'll tell you what you would want her to do with the toys
and she's not afraid to ask for help. [Laughter]
But right now, you can see that she's turning pages of the book herself. [Laughter]
She knows all her animal sounds.
She knows how to count to ten
in English
and Spanish
and were also working on some German for her.
You know, after that it's basically
wind down. If the weather is nice, we'll go out for a walk.
If it's too hot or humid, we will stay indoors because that's not good for her
respiratory function.
You know after six pm when
everybody's home,
she gets a nice bath.
You know, she spends an hour in the bath. She absolutely loves bath time.
We use an inflatable neck ring for her so that she has free movement in the
bath and that's probably the most movement she has independently by herself
during the day. She absolutely loves them. She objects when you take her out.
And they know that she has -- She loves the water. And then she has
a nice massage.
She has more stretching,
more respiratory treatments before she goes to bed
And then she goes to sleep every night
at around ten o'clock pm
after watching one of her favorite shows.
And then again it starts all over. She sleeps for eleven, twelve hours it starts all over
again.
And then a very special thing that we do with the weekend for her is that we take
her to a pool, a
fitness center close by where we actually get her into a therapy pool
And she spends well over an hour in that
and the benefits from the water
therapy are immense for her.
And the two of us get -- the two of us get into the water and --
I mean that's where she can really move
freely, you know? I mean, it's just amazing. You know, she can
actually --
we always bring like a very small
ball into the pool with us so she actually can finally reach for something,
but she's unable to do
outside of water.
And it's been really, really good i think for her alignment
since she's always sitting or, you know,
even when she's in the stander, you know, you're never one hundred percent sure
that she has the proper alignment.
But, you know, with the buoyancy and with the water --
I think it's been great for her positioning.