Becca's Dream

Becca was born in 1982. She never stood by herself untill late 1985. On May 17 1986 she took her first solo steps. She would walk holding our hands but would sit down immediately if we took the security of our hand away. We had her hold onto a balloon that we were holding and walked her from one end of the house to the other and back and forth again and agian. When I had the camera ready her daddy let go of the balloon. She did not notice, just kept on walking. She was quite upset and not a little panicky when she first realized that she was walking on her own but soon adjusted to the idea. 

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Becca’s first independent steps

From then on she just kept going faster and faster always with her head down. Becca would careen and crash through life for the next twenty three years. For all of those twenty three years we battled to keep her safe and to get her to walk with her head up. Nothing worked.  Did you know that if you run head long into one of the metal posts in a mall they will actually ring like a gong?   Warning checking this info out can really hurt your neck or knock you unconscious.

Three weeks into the FTEA program Becca started lifting up her head. She has come close to crashing into posts and walls but has lifted her head just in time to pull up short of a crash.

Dec 9 2009 Becca as she walks now with head up.

After her stroke in 2007 Becca was not lifting her feet or noticing any uneven surfaces. She would trip and fall over the smallest bump in her path. After two months of riding she started showing awareness of bumps in her way.  We would watch her stop; fish with her foot by waving it above any suspiscious spot until she knew where to safely set it down. She now has an awareness of where she is in space and a visual awareness of what stationary objects could endanger her as she travels. Twenty years of daily remedial work in school never made a dent in this problem but a few months on a horse once a week has resolved 90 % of the issue. We will keep her in FTEA just as long as we can afford lessons.

After Becca's stroke Abby Harr kept her from falling as she relearned how to run.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Becca's Joys & Challenges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.