March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness month

Today starts Cerebral Palsy Awareness month. Cerebral Palsy effects 1 in every 200-400 births. Currently there are approximately 800,000 children and adults living with this non progressive disability, with 10,000 babies being born/diagnosed every year.

Since getting a computer years ago I've joined some online support groups for parents with kids that have Cerebral Palsy and since joining Facebook I've met even more parents with kids that have Cerebral Palsy. All of my 50 years of having CP I thought I knew all there was about it but you know after talking to my new friends and after reading thier posts and Blogs I keep learning more and more. I always had the traditional physical therapy with the stretching and learning how to me more independent through getting therapy. Also when I was very young like 2 or 3 yrs old I got a type of therapy called Patterning. My mom and dad had volunteers come to our house to help with this type of therapy that they did twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Since they didn't have video cameras back then I did a search on Youtube and found a child being patterning and here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x15SyJda32Y&NR=1 The idea behind this is to get the child used to certain movements like crawling.

And what I'm learning today is about new methods of therapies, one is the Anat Baniel Method here is a video of a child doing this type of therapy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izCF1puNo24&NR=1 and another type is suit therapy which is pretty interesting is the suit therapy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i76Ytl6jOKU

So as you can see over the years therapies for CP are changing. Mine was the old time method with the heavy metal braces that made me feel like I was carrying around big heavy weights! My braces were like the kind Tom Hanks ran out of in "Forrest Gump".

I just Pray one day no babies will be born with CP, until then we just do everything we can to improve and maintain the quality of life for children and adults with CP. I know my life with CP isn't easy at times but for the most part I'm living a happy, successful life with my everyday challenges.

Have a great weekend everyone!! :)