a possible answer, and an observation

Yesterday was ‘clinic day’ for Logan, his annual visit to the Craniofacial Clinic.  The visit went exceedingly well—the speech therapist was quite pleased with his progress, and both the developmental pediatrician and the plastic surgeon noted the significant improvement in his speech.  He needs to go back sometime reasonably soon for an orthodontic work-up, but that wasn’t on the schedule for this visit and there wasn’t an orthodontist available to do a quick look so we’ll be making yet another trip to Children’s in the relatively near future.

The big news, though, came in a discussion with both the speech therapist and the developmental pediatrician.  They both talked about his motor planning issues and his apraxia of speech and used a term we hadn’t heard before:  global apraxia.  It fits.  Global apraxia (or the other commonly used term, developmental coordination disorder--DCD) pretty nearly defines Logan to a T.  It has been fascinating this morning to do a little research, and to learn some things about how to help make a difference for him.  The road is still long, but this opens some new doors for us.  A definitive diagnosis of DCD would mean much more help available to him since DCD is a recognized disorder with an associated ‘diagnostic code,’ the codes the insurance companies require to make payments.  Yahoo!!  Finally…we might just be able to get Logan the full therapy help he needs!!

We stopped in to say hello to Nick and had fun seeing him.  He still looks awesome, and he and Ryan played together for a bit while we were upstairs at clinics.  Ryan had a blast with Nick and Nick looked pretty excited to have someone his own size to play with.  We’ll stop in again tomorrow to see him (Logan has his FM system appointment at Children’s tomorrow) and see him once more for sure next week when Logan goes to the audiologist.  Good thing Children’s is fairly close…

And the observation:

I would MUCH prefer to get up early and make a 600 mile round trip to Pullman in a single day than leave at 3pm to make the 200 mile round trip to Port Townsend.  The drive to Pullman was peaceful and beautiful; the early rush hour drive to Port Townsend was stressful and exhausting.  Give me open roads with gorgeous scenery any day!    I guess I am much more a country girl at heart than I ever thought.