Ariana's Posts
346 posts
Miss Dee (Tony’s first occupational therapist) and I had been talking several years ago during one of his initial appointments, both about things that I had observed and things that she observed with our son. She looked at me and said something to the effect of, “So he really struggles with transitions.” I agreed but
Earlier this week I submitted comments to the Division of Developmental Disabilities as part of a legally mandated public comment period for proposed changes to the policy that governs prior authorization for assistive speech device technology, or AAC. For a while now my posting schedule has been every Friday, however I felt like for those
For Miss Dee, Tony’s First OT You and I both cried the last day our son worked with you. Over the months you worked with our family, you were a kind and encouraging presence as we began our journey of finding out what could be causing his symptoms and emerging developmental delays. To this day
A couple of years ago, I was driving Tony to one of his many therapy appointments. As I pulled to a corner of an exit ramp, I lowered my window and held out some cash to a gentleman standing at the corner with a sign. He quickly met my eyes and then looked down, back
Much of my time feels like it’s not really my own right now- paid or unpaid- so I’m going to keep my words and explanations here as stripped down as possible.. A question could be posed after reading last week’s post: why would being a temporary direct care worker covering our son’s habilitation hours increase
November started with me plucking crayons like petals from a Ziploc bag, handing only one at a time to Tony, who colored an image of marigolds in short bursts while I talked to him about Dia de los Muertos. Coloring marigolds seemed more suited to our son’s current fine motor abilities than sugar skulls, which
Julie, Tony’s First NMT Therapist So many years have passed since we worked together, and though you ended up needing to take a different job elsewhere to meet the needs of your own growing family, our family will never forget what you contributed to Tony’s progress during that first year of music therapy. For your
I’m not going to say who left the cup of water by my laptop, or who knocked it over. Neither actions were done by me, but I don’t consider either of those actions to represent the biggest misfire in this chain of events. I will admit to swearing when I saw what happened, and for
Perhaps some of you may not have thought about it, but some of you may have given your imaginations brief rein to fill in the largely unwritten subtext of last week’s post. What does it feel like to stay awake entirely for one night and for parts of multiple nights after that holding and gently
“…last night while I was trimming Tony’s fingernails, he jerked and I cut his finger…took off the tip of it, actually. We were unable to control the bleeding at home because he was fighting so bad against it, it was just me and Hannah because Andy was at work, and ended up having to call
