Free!

As mentioned a couple of posts back, we've been waiting for Sophie's official discharge from the last of her therapies, those being physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

We got those discharge letters last week, a couple of days after returning from our annual holiday to Sophie's birthplace of Albany. There was a nice sort of confluence to the timing- every time we go back to Albany, we're walking through our history, and it always brings up fresh memories of Sophie's birth and first six months.

It helps, of course, to have Sophie with us now, walking, talking, and doing everything (and more) a two-year-old should do.

Sophie hanging out in Albany

So. I remember when Sophie was first enrolled in all of her therapies, and we wondered if it was ever going to end. So many other parents have asked me the same thing- how long will we have to wait, if everything is going well, to be free of all the worry?

I guess this is the point where we can say we really are free. Sophie will still see her neurologist once a year until she's five or six, but that's now about looking at how well she's doing instead of assessing her problems. Other than that, unless something specific comes up, we won't need assessment or therapy again. It's a very huge relief.

Sophie out to breakfast

If you're a local, you may have seen our story in the news lately as we try to raise awareness of the treatment Sophie received, and the organisations who helped us- Princess Margaret Hospital, Miracle Babies, Royal Flying Doctor Service, and the Hope for HIE Foundation we're developing.

In the West Australian
In the Sunday Times
On Nova 937 breakfast radio
And tomorrow in the Albany Advertiser

You can find the Hope for HIE Foundation Facebook page here, and we'll be adding useful links and resources to that very soon while we continue to work on building the official website. In the interim, you can also connect with other HIE parents at the Facebook Newborn Brain Cooling page or at the Yahoo HIE Support Centre.

There are some links in the right-hand column to significant posts on this blog if you're new and seeking to find your way around, and as ever, if you want to get in touch, please use the email link on the right-hand side. For the record, I do use a pen name for this blog.

Thanks again to all who have followed Sophie's story so far. We plan to keep this blog running until she's around three, but we intend for most of the information to migrate to the Hope for HIE website when it's up and running.