ABR Therapy

ABR (advanced bio-mechanical rehabilitation) Therapy

At the end of February 2009 we began our ABR journey with our first training clinic and Billee's first assessment.

So far standard physical therapy doesn't seem to be producing many gains for Billee therefore ABR is the road we have chosen to take.

We will need to attend 3 ABR clinics per year. Two in Sydney and once in Singapore where Leonid (the inventor) assesses Billee.

As mentioned before this is not cheap and is also not funded by any body so we are praying that we can keep fundraising and hopefully get some generous donations as ABR will be a life long therapy for Billee.

Luckily this year Leonid visited Australia for the cerebal palsey conference which meant that we won't be needing to travel to Singapore until next year.

Leonids assessment of Billee was both an eye opening and shocking experience.

He explained by showing us a number of areas on Billee's body that need addressing. Some of which I've included below:

• - The top of her head is compressed which is why she has the indents around the temple area.

• - Her jaw bones are collapsed and her 'adams apple' is under her chin instead of in her neck area. (infact she actually doesn't have much of a neck)
• - Her chest is tilted upwards and her collar bones are burried deep under her skin.
• - The muscle in the back of Billee's neck has shortened which gives the impression that she has pretty good head control. As we lengthen this muscle her head control will probably get worse to get better.
• - She has no curvature in her back which makes it completely flat.
• - Her diaphram is facing upwards and as a result her abdomin has moved downwards.
• - Billee's pelvis is out of place which makes her legs face outwards and her bottom has dropped.

As you can imagine as Leonid pointed this and other things out it became painfully obvious to us that what he was saying was true and quite honestly I don't know how we didn't notice a lot of it ourselves. I guess to the untrained eye it is not as obvious.

What it made us realise is that for example having a goal that Billee will sit up is a lot further in the future than we anticipated as firstly we need to address the structure and strength of her body before she will be able to support herself in a sitting up position.

The following day we began our training and were given 3 manual exercises for Billee. These cover her jaw, shoulders and thorax areas and are done for a total of 3 hours a day.

Billee also sleeps with the machine on her overnight. We are hoping and praying that the combination of the 2 will maximise the chances of improvement for her body.

Leonid doesn't promise miracles and teaches you to have realistic expectations.

He emphasises that ABR is a lot of hard work which we know we are more than ready for.

He also advises you to set miniscule goals which make it possible to reach them easier than a massive goal.

The most important part for us is that Billee doesn't mind us doing the exercises on her and the machine actually helps her to sleep.

Below are the abr websites and also Leonids blog which has a massive amount of invaluable advise and information for any parent thinking of learning ABR.

http://www.blyum.com/

http://www.abrtherapy.com/english.html

http://blyum.typepad.com/on_abr_and_beyond/2009/04/vimeo-test-part-1-.html