By Sumathi Morgan | Volunteer
“Let me talk to Ma’am, please don’t interrupt” is what little Anishka says when we tried to ask the therapist some queries about her development. This report is about a child who had spent 5 years of her life since birth in lying position with absolutely no appropriate therapy services accesible. Anishka, a 5-year-old bubbly child diagnosed to have spastic cerebral palsy came to SAMADHAN in 2013. It was during the survey conducted by Sarojini, a mother of a disabled child from the local community who is trained in identification of intellectual disability and counselling and is with SAMADHAN for the past 25 years, happened to meet Pooja Mishra, mother of Anishka, and explained about early intervention services and its benefits and when the family got convinced, they brought the child to SAMADHAN. She had severe spasticity and had tendo achillies, inflamed band of tissue that connects the calf muscle in the leg to heel bone due to gait abnormalities. The child was in pain and used to cry a lot and was unable to sit on her own or even propped. Major challenge was her obesity caused by long period of inactivity since birth.
To address this issue, the child was prescribed, KAFO, a long-leg device that spans the knee, the ankle, and the foot in an effort to stabilize the joints and assist the muscles of the leg. This was done free of cost and it reduced the pain considerably. Though because of severe spasticity, the improvement is slow in all extremities, the child has started bridging by herself.
Now with regular interventions, Anishka is able to come upto quadruped position that is crawling position and can maintain it as well.
The mother sits through the therapy sessions and the child is now given special education as well to improve her cognition and fine motor abilities. “I have now a lot of hope and I am sure Anishka will be attending nursery class like other children from next year”, says a confident Pooja and we hope she will.
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