Week 1 After HBOT

The owner of the HBOT unit that we used for the HBOT sessions told me to monitor Jonathan closely during the first 6 weeks after the 40th dive. That is when we would see the most profound changes. So I will write every Monday evening for the next 6 weeks to summarize the improvements and possible regressions.

Today, Jonathan's OT put 3 drawings in front of him and asked him to draw them the best he could. These are his drawing. The therapist could not believe the precision with which he had drawn these animals, keeping the dimensions into perspective. He had never been able to do this before. If you didn't guess, starting from the left, he drew a fish, on the top right he drew a turtle and on the bottom right a butterfly.

He had another fun and connected day.

Improvements Observed in the Past Week:

• Better eye contact: his eye sight doesn't seem lost anymore
• More curiosity: he is asking lots of questions, his senses seem more balanced allowing him to take in more input than in the past.
• More energy: he hardly seems tired lately. He is keeping up with Vanessa's pace. In the past, they would play for 30 minutes or less and he would go to the sofa and rest. He now won't stop playing unless we bathe him or take him to bed.
• More empathy: if he hurts us, and we complain, he immediately reacts, apologies, asks if we are okay.
• Better motor skills (both fine and gross): his fine motor skills have made a dramatic turn. He is now better than ever at writing or drawing. He can also undress himself and dress backup (still a bit clumsy, but he does it)
• More conversational language: his language has really improved in the past month. But this week is shaping up. He is able to put together sentences with pronouns and proper tense. He is also able to understand better.
• Improved Social Skills: this is an area we need a lot of work in, but this week his social skills were better.
• Sensory: he is able to tolerate Vanessa's touches, hugs and rough play.
• Pretend Play: this week his imagination has really taken off. With Vanessa, they are making things up all the time, and he is really loving it. The past few days, neither has been interested in watching TV. The prefer to play with each other.
  

Areas for Improvement:

• Social Interaction with the other kids his age: He needs a lot of work in this area.
• Speech and pragmatics: He needs a lot of work in this area.
• Jargon language: when he gets excited, he tents to use jargon to express what is in his head and emotions.
  
• Humming: although this is getting better, he still hums and that takes him to his la-la land.

Pictures:

Playing in our backyard -
Vanessa was pushing Jonathan and then Jonathan would push Vanessa

Vanessa loves his brother. So she hugged him and that turned into a play

Vanessa and Jonathan playing inside the rubber house. Jonathan initiated this.

Vanessa was pretending to read Jonathan a story and he was listening.

They were pretending that it was raining and they were holding an umbrella.

We had many situations like today's where they both played and would allow me to take pictures. He was very happy today