Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Covid-19 and appointments

I usually like to update this blog when we have attended some appointments because not much changes day-to-day. Elias is a typical 11 month old - getting into everything. He is crawling around, pulling himself up on furniture and trying to walk with the help of one of his parents' hands. However, with covid-19 looming, I wasn't sure if we would be going to appointments this week.

This is how we feel about covid-19

We had 3 appointments scheduled: physiotherapy, star scan and a helmet fitting. I had called all three places to see if they were still wanting us to come or if we should lay low. Our first appointment, physio, said that they are taking patients as long as they are healthy. So off we went. The PT noticed how well he is moving now. She said that he has a couple of things to work on, like squatting, before he can start to walk which is the next stage. She also told us that Elias is on par for development when it came to mobility skills. We are ecstatic that Elias is back on track for development.


Elias' second appointment was the star scan and a follow up with Dr. Ross. The cranio-facial office is in the Children's Hospital in Winnipeg (not exactly a place I would like to go during a pandemic). When I called, Dr. Ross' office didn't know whether we would be coming in or not but informed us that they will call me back when they had an answer. This afternoon, Dr. Ross personally called me and told me that because Elias is not an urgent case we could do an over-the-phone follow-up. So we chatted for a couple of minutes and we have good news!

Elias' head shape is so close to being in the normal range that we can take off the helmet completely! Dr. Ross said that at this point what the doctors are looking for is to see if you stand 6 feet away from Elias does his head look proportionate. It does. I immediately took off Elias' helmet after the phone call. Tonight will be the first time in exactly 8 months that Elias is sleeping without a helmet. We are finishing our journey with helmet therapy but are starting the head banging awareness project. I expect that there will be a lot of tears in our near future.

helmet free

Our third appointment, the helmet fitting, will be cancelled tomorrow as we no longer need it.

Up Next:
Follow-up appointment and star scan - July