Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Update on Jackie

Jackie's status:
Jackie has had torticollis since she was born. We have been working on it with physical therapy and a botox treatment to help fix her "tilt" of the head. We also did helmet therapy to fix the shape of her head due to the torticollis. Now more than a year late she has relapsed b/c of us being sick every month in the fall (she was fatigued and that doesn't help with the strength of her neck) and her not wearing her glasses. We went to our physical therapist and they recommended seeing the specialist again. Here is what we concluded:

Went to Pediatric Rehabilitation Specialist again and they agreed she is not a candidate for surgery!!!!!! She is on the fence whether or not she needs botox again. About half to 2/3rds of their patients, this is common to receive botox twice. We are going to get a second opinion about her eyes to see if the vision might be a problem with the torticollis. In about 1/4 of patients there is an underlying problem with the vision called: 4th cranial nerve palsy.

She actually has gotten better with the tilt in the last month, b/c we have been more adamant with the glasses.

Secondly Jackie is proned to small seizures and is currently on a drug to help get rid of them. We found this out in the summer after receiving the botox treatment. It is a good thing we are getting most of these medical treatments taken care of.