Just a note of encouragement. My good, fellow, micro-preemie friend whose son also has a shunt and has some similarities to Jonah, emailed me about yesterday's posting. She said she had noticed mild spasms a few times with her son but their therapist had echoed similar comments as our PT yesterday. She said more than anything it just meant there had been some neurological damage at one point and referred to it as Clonus and that it could mean nothing at all or be tied to other issues such as CP, etc.
I looked up Clonus and the description I found was: Clonus (from the Greek for "violent, confused motion") is a series of involuntary muscular contractions due to sudden stretching of the muscle. Clonus is a sign of certain neurological conditions, and is particularly associated with upper motor neuron lesions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), stroke, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord damage and hepatic encephalopathy.
I really appreciated her positive, upbeat attitude. Hopefully what I've noticed (just briefly, I haven't noticed it in several days) falls in this category but we do know that CP is likely, just not the severity. No one can fault us by saying we never were aware of the possibilities.
We will keep pushing forward with therapy and working out with Jonah at home, hopefully we'll see good results. For now, onward we go, with determination and love.
1 comment:
Both of my boys had clonus in both legs at right about the same age. Adam's was most severe and made me terribly nervous but now he's completely unaffected (he had bilateral grade 2 bleeds). It's hard not to worry but it's really too soon to say what it will mean. I always noticed that it happened more when they had been in the jumperoo or we were helping them "stand" like their muscles were just too immature to handle much use at that point.
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