Support Maya's recovery

Tomorrow morning, Maya, Sammy and I are flying back to Wellington. Mum (lovely amazing mum who's been up here pretty much the whole time with us) drove our car down today so the kids could avoid a long car journey. Maya is extremely excited about going home. Sammy is also excited but really sad as well to be leaving his amazing class and school up here. Belmont School welcomed him with open arms and he's had an inspiring teacher, a lovely group of friends and such a great time. He's been quite teary about leaving this evening.

Maya was originally very anxious about returning home, but that's been replaced by excitement as it's got closer and closer. Also, she's had visits from several of her Wellington friends and she's found it really easy to just slip back into her old friendships, so that's not worrying her so much any more. She's going to start at school next week for just four hours (1 hour per day for 4 days), and then increase that if it's not causing too much fatigue. I still haven't envisaged how we will logistically manage our lives with different pick up times, daytime care for Maya and running the cafe. I've been putting it in the too hard box, but now it's about to become a reality. I guess, once again, we'll just figure it out. I'm not going back to work, as that's just too difficult to add into the mix.

So, ten weeks after that 'extreme medical adventure', Maya has made remarkable physical recovery. When we moved from the hospital to the Wilson Centre, she was still noticeably weaker on her right side, but that has fully corrected itself. She still has 6 months of no contact sports, no playgrounds (yikes!), no vigorous activity and preferably not spending any time where she could inadvertently get hit on the head by a flying ball. Her communication has improved dramatically over these six weeks, but reading, writing, listening, vocabulary and speaking are all still very difficult for her. She is reading at about her five or six-year old level, which is incredibly frustrating for her. Thankfully, her neuro-psych assessment put her at average or above average for a nine-year old (cognition, mental processing, memory, task-solving stuff), so she's just as clever as ever. Her loopy sense of humour is also fully intact!

Her MRI scans show the damage to the area governing language - there's nothing there where there used to be all those words! - but the encouraging news is that being under the age of ten, the odds of her brain forming new connections to compensate for what's missing are good. Good old neuro-plasticity at work.

Maya has been assigned a wonderfully proactive Speech Language Therapist from the Ministry of Education. She's been busy contacting the school, her teacher, stroke experts, her rehabilitation coordinator in Wellington, organising workshops, and has taken on Maya's case very enthusiastically. I believe it's very rare to have a paediatric aphasia case, so she must be an interesting case study.

So, unknown next stage.