Saturday, May 7, 2011

Breathing Treatment

This is what one of Aviana's breathing treatments look like. We do this 10 times a day for 5 seconds, and we add 5 seconds every 3 days until we get up to 30 seconds a session.

After we complete a treatment, she is unbelievably loose, and attentive. She also opens her mouth like she wants to talk to us.

After the first one I ever did, I was just kidding around, and asked her to say Mama.....I swear she did. I was in such shock, but then my skepticism stepped in, and made me doubt her until I heard it again.

Dave came in tonight, and told me he thought she said it too.

11 comments:

  1. If you heard it then SHE SAID IT!! I SWEAR!! Believe your ears!! That is just how Fi started talking and I didn't believe it at first. Now she says so many things and I still have "professionals" tell me that she isn't talking. IF YOU HEARD IT, SHE SAID IT!!! HOORAY!! Love you all!! xoxox Happy mama's day!
    -Sophie

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  2. Also, LOVE the video! She looks AMAZING! So beautiful!!
    -Sophie

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  3. Hi! My name is Karen and I've got 2 boys adopted from Guatemala. I've been following your blog since shortly after Aviana's accident and your family has been in my prayers daily.

    I was looking around on youtube this morning and found a video of a trio singing a song called "Avianna Sings". It's a really sweet song and I just wanted to share it with you. You can find it at http://youtu.be/YB7JCteUxlo. I hope that you will be able to experience Aviana singing to you very soon.

    Happy Mother's Day,
    Karen in GA

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  4. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY JEN!
    I know that she said it! That is so great! It is also great that you can do some kind of therapy and get immediate results. I love how she gets loose and attentive after it. The video is so great! I hope that you enjoy your special day today!
    Love,
    Tracy

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  5. Happy Mother's Day to the best mom a brain injured child (or healthy brained child) could ever ask for.

    Do something for YOU today. Tell Aviana to take a hike, her mama needs a few minutes to herself.

    I love you my dear friend.

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  6. Ok...I just have to say that Avi is gorgeous. So incredible to see her in video. Amazing. Ok....we HAVE to come visit....this week? Seriously!!!

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  7. I am completely curious on why the breathing treatments assist with Aviana speaking and what the other benefits are to her therapies?

    Maybe you can start Tuesday Therapy Explanation Thread for ,we, your curious readers. :)

    Now, Happy Mama's Day and what a beautiful daughter!!!! You, Your husband and Aviana amaze me often. Thank you for sharing your path.

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  8. thats amazing she does seem so much more alert. who would think her breathing treatment would do that. Thanks again for all the sharing you are doing, until the video's pattern therapy looked like patterns on a page in my head.

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  9. Can I cry?

    Oh my heck you can just SEE her WANTING TO SPILL HER WORDS OUT!!!! It's like her EYES talk for her.

    and...WOW...seems like she's doing SO much better with her head support. I know Daddy was helping her but still.

    She's SO beautiful ya'll....

    And you can see the FIGHT in her....

    WINNING!!!!!!!!!

    Andrea

    (BUT! Ya'll still need to figure out a way to get a 'break' from therapy on a consistent basis....)

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  10. Okay, so I don't know how I missed this post. Thank goodness for the archives.

    Anyway, I just want to chime in that if you heard her say "mama" then she DID. I'm so happy you ASKED her to say this (even as a joke) and then wow, she did it!

    Okay, so of course I'm going to tell you a "this reminds me of when..." story to go along with this. Because that's what I do, right?

    So this reminds me of the time about 2 years after Audriana's accident, and we were just starting her eye therapy and the new breathing treatments and all that. Since her accident, her right eye would wander "out" and so this made her eyes "crooked". Her right eye was always pointing towards the right. I missed many things about the "old" Audriana - her voice, her fluent 4-year-old speech, her activity, her walking, her right arm, etc - but one of the things that I missed almost more than all the others was the appearance of her sweet, sweet face...because that one eye that pointed the other way was just so disturbing to her look. I mean, everyone noticed it. We could be sitting at a restaurant, and her limp wouldn't be obvious because she was sitting, her right arm wouldn't be obvious because she was sitting still, and her speech wouldn't be obvious because she was sitting there being quiet -- so for a time she would almost look "normal" and like the old Audriana, except for that eye. People would see her pretty face and that eye that pointed the other way, well, it just gave her an automatic look that told everyone that she wasn't quite right. Oh, I know I am being superficial about it. But I'm just being honest. It was very hard to see her eyes pointing in two different directions every single day when once they were so straight and perfect.

    ::: sigh :::

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  11. Well anyway, so one night about two years into the accident, I went to bed and I actually prayed for Audriana's eye. Just her eye. I asked God to please let her eyes be straight when I woke up the next morning. I won't lie and tell you that I believed I'd wake up the next morning and her eyes would suddenly be straight, but I still went to bed asking for that. Oh ye of little faith, right? So the next morning, as I was doing Audriana's mask and after the 1 minute was up, I remembered what I had prayed for. Her eyes, of course, were still going in different directions with her left eyes staring straight at me and the right eye pointing all the way to the side, out looking in the other direction. And so I sighed, a little sad that morning, and for some unknown reason (I really thing it was God prompting me) I asked her, "Audriana, can you put your eyes straight? Can you point both eyes towards me?" I had never asked her to do this. For some reason, it had never occurred to me to ask her to do this. Like I said, I really believe God directed me to say this. So I asked her, and then she concentrated for a minute, and she pulled that right eye straight ahead, and for the first time in two years she was looking staring back at me with two perfectly aligned eyes. I was looking into the face of my old Audriana. I yelled, "Oh my gosh!! Look at that! " and I don't remember all that I said but I got on the phone and called Rich and he couldn't believe it. Audriana was happy that I was so happy. Once she stopped concentrating, her eye went back out to the right, but I was okay with that. Because I knew she could pull it back in at any time. And from then on, whenever we took photos, she would pull her eye in so that she looked better for the photo.

    Later, in 2000, she asked to have her eye operated on (the muscle) so that her eyes would be straight. And because she asked, we got her that surgery. Up until that time, it never occurred to us to do that because we knew that it wouldn't change her vision problems, but that it would only be cosmetic, and we didn't want to subject her to a surgery just so she would "look" better. But she got tired of kids and other people always asking her "why does your eye go that way??" and so, we had the surgery done (it actually took two surgeries for the complete correction) and since then, her eyes have been straight. You know she's 18 now, and for the most part her eyes are straight, but sometimes when she is really trying to see something far away, her right eye goes out for a second or two. Her eye doctor tells me this is because she sees better out of the left eye, and so when she focusses on something far away, her other eye goes to the side so it's vision is not a distraction. She cannot converge her vision at a far away distance, only up close. As I said, the surgery didn't change the way she saw things, but just the appearance of her eyes.

    Anyway, the reason I tell you this is because I've learned that it never hurts to ask. I asked God to help her eyes, then the next morning I ask Audriana to straighten her eyes. And they both did what I asked! And you asked Avi to say "mama" and she did.

    Never stop asking, Jen. Just never stop asking :)

    xoxo
    Trina :)

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