My name is Michelle Davies, and I’d like to share our daughter Kalea’s story with you. When my husband Andrew and I were told in August 2003 that our young daughter had cerebral palsy we were devastated and frightened.
Today, thanks to a remarkable program offered by Ontario March of Dimes called Conductive Education, we have reason to believe that Kalea will have a good quality of life as she grows and develops. We can now imagine a life for Kalea as most parents do – that she will have friends, she will do well in school, and will someday have a good job and be able to make her own way in the world as a strong, beautiful adult.
But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. Allow me to start from the beginning.
Kalea had a very quick entry into the world on June 8th 2002 at only 32 weeks gestation. She spent an uneventful 2 1/2 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, and when we brought home our beautiful, tiny baby girl we thought that everything was going to be okay.
As Kalea grew and developed, we soon began to notice that everything was NOT okay. She was late reaching her milestones and was a very 'stiff' baby. It was when Kalea was just 13 months old that we first heard the diagnosis which would turn our world upside down, the diagnosis that dashed our hopes that Kalea’s developmental lags were just due to being premature.
To be honest, I didn’t even know what cerebral palsy (CP) meant when I was given the diagnosis over the phone while out shopping, but I knew it wasn’t something good. I called my mom on the way home, and had to pull the car over as the tears spilled down my face.
My husband’s reaction when I arrived home was even worse than that. Without telling him anything, I went to the computer and typed 'cerebral palsy' into the Google search engine. The first page I opened had a little girl sitting in a wheelchair. I told my husband: "This is cerebral palsy, this is what Kalea has". His legs collapsed from beneath him, and he sat on the floor crying as we both tried to absorb the news.
I turned to an online group for parents of children with CP for support and learned about a lot of different therapies and treatments that parents were trying with their children. One of the programs that everyone said got positive results was called Conductive Education.
When I looked into this further, I was overjoyed to find out that it was available at the Ontario March of Dimes in Toronto! One month after her 2nd birthday, Kalea attended their four-week summer camp.
Before the March of Dimes camp, Kalea was unable to crawl, change positions from lying to sitting to standing, and made very little use of her left hand, which was always stiff. As well, she was not weight bearing properly and had very little balance.
We weren’t sure what to expect on that first day of summer camp, but Kalea absolutely loved it! Our daughter is a singer, and all of the songs the conductors use when showing the children how to move properly were just her cup of tea!
Kalea is also very verbal, and the practice of saying the things she is doing really helps her to solidify the learning. Other benefits of the camp were that Kalea made some new friends (who are still friends today), that she could relate to and who also had the same disability as her. And, as a parent, I found some women that I could talk to and cry with as we related the things our CP children could and couldn’t do.
By the end of the 4th week of summer camp, the gains Kalea made were easily visible to us. She was using her stiff left arm much more readily, she was able to change from lying to sitting to standing, and she could get herself into a crawling position, although she wasn’t quite crawling. As well, her body positioning and balance had improved enough that she was able to stand for 5 seconds and she was also able to walk with a ladder and holding a rope!
We were so impressed with the Ontario March of Dimes conductors, the program and with the fact that our little girl was working so hard and loving every minute of it, that we continued to enroll Kalea in the Conductive Education classes on Saturdays, March Break camps and, of course, in the summer.
I cannot imagine where Kalea would be today without the support of the conductors who work with our daughter. It is such an intense program, and the children are constantly working and learning for the entire time they are in the classroom.
Kalea has continued to develop her gross motor and fine motor skills, and this past October she even took 4 steps completely independently!! The look on her dad’s face as she walked into his open arms was priceless, and brought us all to tears.
We send a heartfelt thanks to you and Ontario March of Dimes for making this possible through your generous gifts!
Michelle Davies