Doing Better

After some extra hard times in December and early January, Katherine is doing better. Things are not all sunshine and roses and I dare not hope that things will stay this good but this post will only be about the good stuff.

Katherine is ticcing far less. We’ve had no long intense ticcing clusters in the last week. There have even been fewer isolated tics and most of those are facial-only. So there is some improvement in her Tourette’s and/or her anxiety which are the two main factors in her ticcing.

In addition to that she is functioning at a higher level (less autistic) than we’ve seen in well over a year.

She is spending time all over the house instead of staying in her craft/therapy room. She is carrying toys from room to room and even playing with them. She is an 8-yr-old playing with baby and toddler toys but just playing appropriately is an accomplishment for her. She and Jonathan are going through a play-doh phase. She has made some really imaginative little things including a snowman and an “angel” who has its arm (or wing) around the snowman’s shoulders. Art is her primary means of expression and the best means we have of knowing what is going on inside her head and it really warms my heart to see her making an “angel” showing affection to a snowman. You can click on the image to see it larger.

Katherine is also showing care for 2-yr-old Jonathan. She has been bringing toys to his room or crib. And last week, every time we went in the car she would gather up an armload of toys to take along. At first we thought she was bringing them for herself but then she would put them on the floor in front of Jonathan’s car seat where she couldn’t possibly get to them from her seat.

She is eating a few meals at the table with the family and even feeding herself some of the time.

We started to teach her new vocabulary again and started by picking up where she had left off when we had to discontinue new teaching over a year ago. I am happy to report that she is not only doing well enough to begin learning new concepts again but she retained everything that she had been working on when we quit, which is far more than we had hoped for.

A side note: I have to wonder why we’re seeing such a big improvement right now. Without belaboring the point, I’ll say that my fundamental faith in God and Jesus are as strong as ever but I’ve been struggling with the topic of prayer. I’m slowly feeling my way back into that aspect of my relationship with God and I have to wonder if the recent huge increase in the number of people praying for us (response to the video I posted) is connected to Katherine’s improvement.