Success Stories

See how early detection affected these families.

Owen was diagnosed with CP at 6 months.

“I think the most fortunate thing is that we knew so early what was going on and could understand it. We could start working with him literally out of the gate. As soon as we got out of the NICU, he started therapy. .”

— Evan, Owen’s Father

How did Early Detection help Owen?

He's been through pretty much any therapy you can think of. He goes to physical therapy and occupational therapy pretty much every week. We've done speech and swallow therapy and also aquatherapy. And the most importantly is therapy at home. It's important to remember that Owen is a baby so he needs to be interacted with like a baby and that's how his brain's gonna grow and learn. He may be missing some pieces that we can help with, but really just interacting with him letting his sisters play with him, making him laugh, doing all the things that a baby does.

My therapist is really good about "Don't let people cuddle and hold him like this. Make sure he's sitting upright. Don't treat him like he's at a six month level, talk to him like he's a one year old and interact with him like a one year old and give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows what's going on.”

TyLynn was diagnosed with CP at 6 months.

“I think once we got the diagnosis and we kind of knew what the plan of attack was going to be, we knew what we needed to focus on to make her develop. We knew what kind of challenges she was going to start facing, because we had more of a mapped out plan.”

— John, TyLynn’s Father

How did Early Detection help TyLynn?

At first her left arm was not very functional, so we got her involved in movement constraint therapy which puts a constraint on one arm so that TyLynn was forced to try to use her affected arm and it really worked for her.

And then next, we moved to her feet. Really working on getting her toe to pull up. That was probably a really big milestone when she could pull up, but then we realized once she pulled up she walked her toenails off for about the next 18 months. She was such a ballerina that we really had to work on getting her toes and getting her to feel e planted and secure.

Eating was also a struggle, we had some sensory issues with eating, and had to do some speech therapy and that helped develop those muscles to where she could eat.

We had a couple instances where she had some choking episodes because she couldn't swallow the right way, so she actually stopped breathing on us a couple different times. Had to take her to the emergency room, that was a scary time but,therapy helped us get through and now she eats anything and everything.

And then, we worked on her eyes. So she's basically got glasses so that she can work on her cognitive abilities now that she's started preschool.