ZRT

All day yesterday Zak was very cranky and continually grabbed his diaper and told me "It hurts!". He would be playing and then drop everything, grab himself, and scream. I would then change his diaper and he was usually a little wet, but not red at all anywhere. He was in obvious pain and I felt so bad for him. Around 4pm when I changed his diaper for the 50th time I noticed he had something that looked like a blister on the underside of his penis. So around 4:30pm I called the pediatrician and was able to get him an appointment at 6:45pm. After the nurse took his temperature she asked if Zak would pee in a cup for a urine sample. I told her I would try and off to the bathroom we went. I cleaned him with the little wipe they gave me and then sat him on the big potty. I held the cup in place and within a few seconds he started to pee. It was obvious he was in pain because he whined and kept trying to hold his pee from coming out. Since he did such a good job the nurse gave him a lollipop and he was back to playing. The pediatrician came in the room and was very surprised he had peed in the cup since he is not potty trained. She said the urinalysis came back fine so he doesn't have UTI. She took a look at him and decided that he has an abscess! She said he could have had a teeny tiny scratch or something that turned into the abscess. So she gave us two prescriptions...once antibiotic ointment and one anti-fungal ointment. Then she told me to keep him in underwear the next few days to help air it out and that by the weekend he could be potty trained! Unfortunately, today we had a busy day planned so Zak has been in diapers, but I might have the guts to try underwear tomorrow.

This morning Ryder's special educator came to the house for a session. She is very happy wit the progress he is making! A few of the skills we are working on now with him are turn taking, learning the difference between big and little, and identifying objects in books. We then ate lunch and headed out to an evaluation for Ryder by a private speech therapist.

The speech therapist had lots of toys out for the boys to play with so she could observe Ryder just playing and using his language on his own. During that time she talked with me about his history, other therapies, and concerns we have. She then did a few activities with him to get a better idea as to where he was language wise. In the end she feels like he could definitely benefit from more speech therapy so we will see her every Thursday for one hour. The three main things we plan to work on with her are oral motor (to help with feeding), pragmatics (social skills), and communicating his basic needs (telling us when he needs a new diaper or food/drink). I have to call our insurance to find out the exact limits our how much speech therapy they will cover, but I know they do cover a certain amount. I really think they had told me in the past because of Ryder's genetic disorder there is no limit for the number of rehabilitative therapies (speech, OT, PT, etc), but I could be very wrong about that too.