Our JourneyWe try our best to illustrate our experience over 9 years of DHT
Rebecca Bridge daughter of Catherine Bridge and David Bridge was born
on the 14th of July 1995. Dolphin Human Therapy has played a large part in Rebecca’s life and what she has achieved so far. Every year improvements have
been seen in Rebecca, some years better than others. Physical changes are the easiest for people to notice. However, the more subtle changes in development,
speech and language, concentration and coordination have been equally important.
Each year Dolphin Human Therapy has given Rebecca a push to the next level and has shown us her parents the next stage that she is capable of achieving.
The biggest thing that DHT has enabled to do; is to return to the UK motivated and empowered and most importantly filled with
the confidence to push the system in the UK for greater resources and more therapy, which are so vital in the development of children like Rebecca.
She was born prematurely and spent the first 4 weeks in the Special Care Baby Unit at Rotherham Hospital. In deed 5 minutes after she was born she stopped
breathing and was immediately transferred to the SCBU.
It wasn’t long before we realised that there was something seriously wrong with Rebecca as she failed to thrive, had low muscle tone, wasn’t growing at a normal speed, wasn’t eating and putting on weight, and was failing to reach the normal developmental targets.
What followed were a desperate two years of extensive investigations and numerous tests, with many different medical experts and specialists in an attempt to try and determine an exact diagnosis for Rebecca’s problems and characteristics.
She spent many days in Hospital as well as she suffered from numerous chest infections and problems with her lungs, which compounded by her low muscle tone meant she had to have her chest and throat cleared by suction on a regular basis.
We went though many trials and tribulations where a multitude of diagnosis was considered but for just short of 2 years no answers were found. The potential lists of diagnosis were endless, many of them frightening in there descriptions and the likely negative prognosis for her future life.
Indeed the Medical experts who looked after Rebecca’s care around the time of her first birthday told us that we should accept what she had, she would be in equipment for the rest of her life and we should have realistic expectations of her future abilities to communicate, thrive and exist in a normal environment.
In short give up is the long and short of it and that our expectations were unrealistic.
We were to find out in later years when we undertook Legal investigations to try and determine what caused Rebecca’s problems, that the medical staff had reported us to social services because we would not accept their prognosis that in short Rebecca had no real positive future .
How wrong they would end up being!
Don’t get us wrong some medical staff was very supportive but some were not and as a result of the not, in early 1997 we demanded Rebecca’s care was taken over by Doctor Chris Ritty at Sheffield Children’s Hospital.
After all the heart ache and all the investigations and the not knowing what we were managing and what action we could take to assist in providing Rebecca with best help we could, we found the answer to the question we’d been striving for.
Chris Ritty established from Rebecca’s notes that in fact a proper brain scan had never been done, ordered one and a diagnosis was found.
Rebecca was diagnosed with a condition called Periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) which is a form of white-matter brain`s injury, that it can affect newborns and much less fetuses; Affected individuals generally exhibit motor control problems or other developmental delays, and they often develop cerebral palsy which in many ways described the problems Rebecca experienced in the first two years of her life, and her physical traits.
Annoyed, angry, upset, bitter, who can describe the emotions that a simple oversight of not doing a proper brain scan had sent us down the road to a diagnosis that continually led to a dead end for 2 years, was at least tempered with the fact that last we knew what we were dealing with. This relief, it was a relief we can assure you in that we knew something more concrete, didn’t make our fears for the future and the uncertainty of where Rebecca’s life would lead any less scary but at least we could attack the problem head on.
In her first 2 years of life along with the routine appointments with mainstream Pediatricians, we saw Growth Specialists, Nutritionists, Physiotherapists, Genetic experts and so on, in fact the list is endless We also started to consider all types of alternative therapies that could have assisted with her lack of the ability to thrive. She remained small, floppy didn’t eat much once we had the diagnosis had been found so we set off on a search to for alternative types of support and therapies.
The hospital visits continued as well as regular longer stays due to her problems with her chest infections. Having a diagnosis at least now allowed us to start investigations into what was of the cause Rebecca’s problems, and if we were to consider having another child we needed a confidence we could avoid the same thing happening again. The fact Catherine gave birth to Rebecca nearly 4 full days after her waters broke and that she had been sent home on two occasions in that time had always concerned us and was something we wanted answers on. We took legal advice and our case was taken on by David Body of Irwin Mitchell Solicitors in Sheffield.
David Body was very supportive and caring and handled the whole situation with massive consideration of our feelings and worries. Two years of investigation ultimately resulted in some of the leading the medical experts in the UK not being able to pin the actions or any one persons negligence as being responsible, but more importantly couldn’t explain what directly caused her diagnosis either. This left us with the scenario that we were very wary of ever having any more children whilst the risk of it happening again could not be measured. What they did tell us no one would recommend the baby not being delivered until 4 days after the breaking of the waters which was no consolation. We also found out that the medical record immediately in the hours after her birth were very sketchy.
Ultimately we did not have another child but this did allow us to focus our efforts 100% in achieving the best we possibly could for her. During the period of the legal investigations described, around Rebecca’s third birthday we discovered through an article in Woman’s Own a story about a child with special needs that had undertaken a therapy called Dolphin Human Therapy that was based in Miami Florida, and experienced positive results and we subsequently read about DHT from SWAN’s (Syndromes Without A Name) newsletter.
That article was to have a major influence on ours, and more importantly on Rebecca’s life as it kick started a 13 year journey and experience, that has played a massive part in the positive progress Rebecca has made in life.
Catherine first telephoned DHT and Diane "Dee Dee" Sandelin in May 1998 who said that temporarily DHT was based in Xcaret in the Cancun peninsula of Mexico. In September 1998 when Rebecca was just 3 years old she has her first encounter with Dolphin Human Therapy. During the 2 weeks Rebecca worked with Diane Sandelin and a physiotherapist. They worked really hard on strengthening Rebecca’s body and getting her to use Macaton signs for yes and no. Even this small breakthrough made such a difference to her life as she now had a tool to communicate her opinions and this reduced her frustration. It was very hard for her parents to watch Rebecca during these 2 weeks as she was full of tears and tantrums but the DHT team were very supportive and the results really showed. Rebecca had been ‘jump-started’ to learn to communicate.
In July 1999 Rebecca returned for 2 weeks of dolphin therapy, this time at Dolphin Cove Key Largo. The purpose behind this year’s therapy with Rebecca was “to decrease anxiety when separated from her parents while increasing appropriate behaviour”. They also targeted “improving physical strength, reaching/grasping for objects, moving from belly to a 4 point crawl position”. Focus was also placed on attention to task as well as eye contact. During the 2 weeks Rebecca had a lot of tears and tantrums but eventually had a lot of fun. The dolphins and water seemed to be a powerful motivator for Rebecca. During the 2 weeks she started to put 2 signs together eg dolphin jump, more swim. Her physical strength and neck control increased and by the end of the 2 weeks Rebecca had overcome her refusal to reach out and touch objects. While Rebecca was there she had her 4th birthday at Dolphin Human Therapy.
In May 2000 Rebecca returned to DHT for a third time, however, on this occasion she had 3 weeks of therapy to help with the settling in process. During this time Rebecca had the privilege of working with a fantastic physiotherapist. Therapy goals for Rebecca this year included increasing torso strength, improved hand and eye coordination, visual tracking and increased vocalisation. Rebecca made progress in all her goal areas and when Rebecca returned friends and family could not believe the improvement in her physical abilities. Her therapist not only worked on her physical strength but also used the intense sensory input of the therapy to stimulate the vestibular system of the brain. This area helps with balance and coordination and research has shown it can develop speech and language. Rebecca was certainly the loudest she had ever been after the 3 weeks of therapy.
In 2001 she returned for a fourth time to Dolphin Human Therapy. This year “a marked improvement was noticed from last year. Her motoric ability, attention to task, separation anxiety, cognition, verbalisations and communication skills have all improved”. The objectives of the therapy were to work on Rebecca’s communication skills using various communication boards to communicate different activities while on the dock. Oral motor exercises were also completed. Physical activities in the water were used to improve balance, stabilisation and strength. Rebecca responded well again to therapy.
For this year’s therapy Rebecca has a week with the speech therapist and a week with the physiotherapist. From a speech and communications perspective Rebecca had struggled for 10 months with a static communication device (not interactive touch screen). Rebecca was getting nowhere with this kind of device and her parents had been told in the UK that she didn’t have the memory for an interactive touch screen. Dolphin Human Therapy disagreed and while there they arranged for a sales representative to demonstrate a dynamic screen. Rebecca loved using this type of communication aid with real pictures and she soon learnt how to toggle between pages. On a physio front Rebecca received lots of stimulus and specific exercises were undertaken and shown to be repeated at home. These helped awaken Rebecca’s body and to make her more receptive to learning. Once again Rebecca advanced from this stimulus and became much stronger and started to use a walking frame at school.
Rebecca’s goals for 2003 were to continue to improve her speech/oral motor skills, to use her communication device to build vocabulary and improve visual attention. Rebecca was relatively new to using the communication device and as parents we saw firsthand that although Rebecca found using it hard at times we needed as a family to encourage her to use it as often as possible and to change our questioning to allow her to answer using simple sentences rather than just one word answers. We came home motivated and determined to work with and push other professionals to make sure Rebecca used her talker and or voice to communicate.
What an amazing time with DHT. Rebecca was using her voice more and more and was becoming disinterested in her talker BUT her clarity of speech meant that in England professionals said she would never be a verbal communicator and had to use a talker. Thanks to 3 weeks intensive oral motor exercises, tongue placement and other American speech techniques which are not used in our authority Rebecca came back to the UK and her speech was clear enough for those who know her well to understand her and we have never looked back . Rebecca is now a child who never shuts up and although the clarity is not always clear as her sentence structure and amount of speech has increased she can communicate in the world around her.
Rebecca had unfortunately been in a car accident in the January and had regressed lost motor skills and strength. This year the objects were to improve endurance and strength and stability and to improve concentration to specific tasks. Using the exciting and amazing stimuli of the dolphins the team managed to “push” Rebecca to stand with support for longer periods and had increased muscle tone and stability. Rebecca has excellent therapists working with her at home however what has to be remembered is that it is weekly or bi weekly and once twice in the holidays. What makes DHT successful is the surrounding and the obvious incentive of the dolphins but also the intensity of the programme and the amount of therapy given over the 3 weeks.
Rebecca last DHT session so far. Rebecca’s objectives again were about improving her strength and endurance. Rebecca was initially reluctant to stretch her arms and legs and had become stiff. During this session not only did she relax her muscles making it easier to reach for objects but the biggest improvement was they had her standing independently again.
Since our last visit to DHT Rebecca has generally made steady progress but there has been no major leaps forward or dramatic progress to declare. We went to tribunal against Rotherham Authority but were unable to persuade them to allow her speech therapy and so to date her clarity of speech is still on a par with when we left DHT 2006. Rebecca still has weekly physiotherapy and while the sessions she has are exceptional it is only enough to maintain her skills not develop them. We are so glad to be that DHT has started again in Grand Cayman and are planning to visit as soon as we can as a family we have missed Dee Dee and the team . Rebecca is looking on the DHT website daily and asking when we can go?
We have written our story to help and give any support we can to any family who is desperate to do anything they can to improve the quality of life of their child and allow them to reach his/her potential.
© 2011 Dolphin Human Therapy Grand Cayman | Call 0793607352 | david@dolphinhumantherapygc.co.uk
