Testimony: Muscular Dystrophy

I just thought I would share this great testimony that I received with all of you:

Amy,
Just HAD to share some exciting news!

You may recall me asking your advice on the 10-year old boy with Muscular Dystrophy that I’m working with. He has extremely low muscle tone, and as a result, we had to make a lot of modifications to the program for him. He could not perform the required arm circles when doing both hands tasks, and therefore found the speed very slow and hard to maintain. Most of the feet tasks couldn’t be done, as he is confined to a wheelchair. However, we do some of them when he is in his walking sling. When he started IM, even the 1 minute tasks completely exhausted him.

He kept begging for faster and faster tempo, and due to the fact that his limited range of movement meant he couldn’t make the arm circles, I let him increase until he reached 100 bpm (he keeps asking to try and see if it will go faster!) accomplished the goal he set out to achieve! He kept working up his duration, and today did 12 minutes! But best of all, he achieved the goal he set for himself: a task average of TEN!

I had promised him several weeks ago, that if he ever made it to 10, I would sent a message to IM, so here it is! – 236 bursts (burst threshold of 3 – we will now increase it to 4!!) and IAR of 21.

Best of all, he’s gone from being very lethargic about doing IM, to looking forward to his sessions. Now that he only has a few sessions left, he tells me he wants to keep doing it! The greatest change we’ve seen in him since IM training is physical. It was our intention to improve his physical skills when we put him in the program. His ability to perform tasks for a longer duration has steadily improved. He very excitedly asked me to feel his IM ‘bump’ the other day (some muscle in his right arm!). This was such a thrill for him, that he told me he has to really push his left arm (much weaker side – he can do very little with the left side) so that he can have some muscle there too!

Academically, he’s very bright, so I doubt we’ll see much in the way of changes there, but our post-IM WJ III will attest to that.