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Thursday, June 19, 2014

Importance of therapies early on instead of later from personal experience

I meant to write this on Friday but I've been keeping busy at work so I haven't had much time to put a post together. I've also been nervous about writing this specific post so I've been putting it off but I feel it's something that really has to be said. I spent the majority of my childhood in Speech Therapy and was given the option to stop my Freshman year of High School even if I was no where near finishing the program, and I definitely wouldn't have before graduation. I was given that option because I was pulled out of class for Speech Therapy and it that itself was a bigger problem than it was in Junior High and especially Elementary School. I sort of regret of not taking Speech Therapy for the rest of High School but now that I've been backsliding again it might not have mattered later on. My speech impediment hasn't stopped me from finding jobs. I went through a few jobs before settling with Kroger and got promoted during the time I've been having Hydrocephalus related medical problems and while my speech has been backsliding.

Even though I'm not willing to go into much detail about it writing on a public site, what I regret now is the lack of Occupational Therapy when a lot of the focus was on  Speech Therapy. I had it in Preschool and then during a two year period when I was in the 5th grade and into Junior High in the form of Adaptive P.E but I wish I would have been offered more. I'm not sure how much the school district offered though, and my parents wouldn't have been able to afford if it wasn't something they would have had to pay for. I'm able to do that majority of my job without a problem but I run into problems when I have to do something that has to do with fine motor skills. I've been offered Occupational Therapy recently but working 5 or 6 days a week and almost full time it's something I don't have time for. I need to keep my availability open as much as possible too so it would be tough to schedule it on a regular basis.

The point of this post is a warning to Parents of children with Hydrocephalus or younger people with it to consider Occupational Therapy if it's not already being provided because problems fine motor skills and other similar problems will just be worse in the work force. I know that there's a lot of people with Hydrocephalus and with some it's obvious it wouldn't be possible early on. But with many people with Hydrocephalus it is possible to lead a pretty normal life. Thanks for reading, and I helped and encouraged others. If you want to know about my specific struggles with fine motor skills at work feel free to send me a E-mail or contact me on the social networking sites where I post links to my blog.

 http://kidshealth.org/parent/system/ill/occupational_therapy.html

 http://kidshealth.org/parent/system/ill/speech_therapy.html

 http://www.hydroassoc.org/docs/A_Teachers_Guide_to_Hydrocephalus.pdf