Heal Nick

New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions. Mark Twain

Never the less and in all due respect to Mr. Samuel Clemens , we sincerely implore all to reflect on the positive of 2007 and carry this through to 2008 and beyond. We are indeed grateful for much and will be anticipating the same for 2008. We sincerely wish everyone in Nick’s World has a Happy, Prosperous & most importantly a Healthy New Year.

The Twelve Days of Christmas was remembered almost in its entirety at music therapy. Take a look at the Photo Gallery.

Nicholas & the entire family wish everyone in Nick’s World a MERRY CHRISTMAS full of love, compassion, understanding and peace.

Nicholas finally seems to be adjusting to the reduced Ritalin dosage. Although his cognitive responses are a little slow, his answers are more correct and articulate. He is also asking questions from time to time, something we haven’t witnessed for the past few weeks. He has a very important evaluation with a gait & spasticity specialist on Thursday to see if anything can be done to get his right leg more functional. “Spasticity is a disorder of the body’s motor system and especially the Central Nervous System’s (CNS), in which certain muscles are continuously contracted. This contraction causes stiffness or tightness of the muscles and may interfere with gait, movement, and speech.” Physical therapists have been working with Nicholas in strengthening & stretching his right leg for over 2 years with minimal success. Hopefully, the evaluation will lead to a solution.

About a week ago one of the few remaining medications Nicholas has been taking, Ritalin, was reduced by 60%. As he’s been taking this for over 2 years, it was time to ascertain the effects, if any, of the decrease. The initial result was he began to show some real frustration with himself, became a bit lethargic and spent last week as rather an angry man. In order to provide some relief, his personal trainer decided he needed a good cathartic, which is now displayed in the Photo Gallery, and it worked. We are always very much in favor of reducing medications, and, hopefully, Nicholas will make the adjustment in another week. The next step is to discontinue it entirely. However, as with all matters dealing with recovery of this type of injury, it’s a very slow process.