Frog in your throat?

Nolan had something in his throat tonight after dinner. He kept clearing his throat, but he still was having trouble and sounded funny. He finally got frustrated and exclaimed to Bill, "I sound like a jerk!"

We have some more details on Nolan's MRI. There is an abnormality in his brain. His doctor called it a 'partial migrational abnormality'. He explained to me that in a developing baby, the nerves start out in a clump and spread out as development progresses. In Nolan's case, some of the nerves didn't do quite what they were supposed to do, or go where they were supposed to go. The problem is in his corpus callosum. The physical results have been Nolan's stiffness, leg pain, and low stamina, along with his speech problems. Now we need to do some neuropsychological tests to see if Nolan's cognitive development was affected. Dr. Rush thinks Nolan is bright, but that he might process things more slowly than other kids. He said Nolan's nerves might be more likely to take the back roads and side streets, while other kids' nerves use the freeway. He wants to see exactly how Nolan processes things, so that his future teachers don't think of him as slow or dumb.

Because this happened to Nolan during his development, it falls under the umbrella of cerebral palsy. It isn't CP in the classical sense, but for 'labeling' purposes, Nolan has CP. This is important when it comes to getting him assistance in school and hopefully, getting us some financial assistance with his physical therapy. He really needs therapy twice a week, but I've only been sending him once a week, due to the expense. Someone is supposed to be calling me to walk me through the process of applying for Children's Special Services.

If there is a bright side, it's that this is not degenerative. Nolan isn't getting worse. But on the down side, we can't fix this. We can only help him learn to cope.

And he doesn't sound like a jerk. :-)