Consider This

We spent the next months in therapy, at doctor's appointments. We spent a lot of time in Wal-mart, buying stuff we felt like we needed for her therapy. Like, if we just found the right magical toy combination, she would be so enamored by it, she wouldn't be able to stop herself from using her left arm normally. The truth is probably more like this: if I was out getting these things, I was helping. I was doing something about it. Every few hours, we had a whole therapy routine, and it was wearing on us all. It was hard. We didn't feel that we could just play with our kid, we had to make sure it was left-arm related. It was never fun for the sake of fun. No silliness. My husband, he was better about the silliness. If I didn't yell at him to do her exercises instead. If I could go back, I would change that. I would play. Let go. Especially since for so long, there just wasn't any improvement. She continued to grow, and to learn, but that stubborn arm wasn't giving us any more progress.
I was confused, because what I was being told, for the most part, was that she was fine. But, she WASN'T fine, and all you had to do was look at her to know it. As she got older, her injury began to give itself away more. Her behaviors couldn't really be traced to just baby actions anymore. She tried harder to make more specific movements, but the ability just wasn't there. I asked every medical professional I came across what their opinion was. Oftentimes, I would get a condescending look and an assurance that my baby wasn't the only one with problems. That I was lucky, because at least she could move her arm. Like I was so ungrateful to need more than that for my kid.
As my daughter's first birthday began to approach, I noticed that she had plateaued and that we were seeing no results. I thought, surely, something else is wrong. It can't all be muscle imbalances. She is muscular, she is so strong. There must be some other obstacle in her way, making it impossible for her to master these movements.

I began the research again, this time looking more closely at surgical options. It was obvious that therapy alone was not going to do the trick. I came across Dr. Rahul Nath in Houston, TX. I had heard of him before, but he was so far away it didn't seem like a viable option. So began the next leg of our very long journey. I studied his website. I studied the man. I made an appointment to see him in Chicago.