(photo: Cameron with Jacques)Prof. Lorna Jacklin, who has just been awarded Woman of the Year 2008 in the category of health services, is a neurodevelopment paediatrician connected to Wits University and Johannesburg Hospital. She runs a clinic at the hospital specialising in the treatment of all sorts of disabilities in children. On Fridays the clinic treats blind and visually impaired children, and that's why my mom, Cameron and I found ourselves there very early on Friday morning. It was reassuring to realise that there are such amazing pockets of excellence within the state health sector. It was also moving and humbling to see the needs of the nation displayed in the corridors and waiting rooms of the hospital.
The Lord has really led us to remarkable, wise, encouraging health care professionals in our journey with Cameron, and Prof. Jacklin is certainly one of these people. Again we learned so much about how we can be stimulating him to maximize the vision that he does have. She shed light on why he is covering his right (weaker) eye all the time with his little fist: pushing on his eye causes him to see flashes of ‘light’ – so he’s actually trying to stimulate his retina. This can cause damage to the cornea, however, so we need to discourage him from doing it. She showed us how we can get him to localise (i.e. how to encourage him to turn his head towards the direction of a sound), how we can combine sound, sight and touch in teaching him to see, etc. She noted that Cam is very interested in language and is tuned into conversational turn-taking.
An interesting aside on political correctness: Prof. Jacklin reckons that one must certainly use phraseology like ‘Look at that!’, ‘Can you see that?’ etc, even with completely blind children, because ‘seeing’ is not something we just do with our eyes. To see something is to experience it, and we all very often use our hands or other senses to ‘see’ things.
Prof. Jacklin works with a team of therapists and after seeing her we had a session with the OT, physio and speech therapist – a similar kind of assessment as done at the Baby Therapy Centre. They reinforced a lot of what we have been doing under the guidance of the BTC therapists and gave us added insight, like minimizing all other stimulus when showing him things, bringing objects really close to his face, using dispersed light on shiny objects, supporting his head when doing visual therapy so that he doesn’t have to concentrate on holding it up and he can just focus on seeing, how to let him explore his fingers, our faces, etc so that he learns to see them.
What was such an encouragement was that, according to Prof. Jacklin and the therapists, Cam is already at the level of a 5 month old baby in terms of his ‘milestones’ (sitting, etc) - he was 4 months on Thursday 7 August – so they’ve given us ways just to keep up the momentum of his learning so that his visual impairment doesn’t cause him to fall behind in his development.
Probably the most encouraging thing about Friday’s visit to Joburg Gen was that the physio assessing Cameron also had congenital cataracts…! She had them removed when she was ten months old. She is now in her forties, has glaucoma and can’t drive, but you would NEVER suspect that she has poor eyesight. She is a brilliant, competent, gracious professional who reads and writes, also knows Braille, etc… Just amazing.
Last night Murray put Cam underneath his play gym with his favourite rubbery purple monster hanging from it. He positioned a torch behind Cam, shining it onto the monster and Cam SAW it! He played with it for ages, reaching out with both hands, putting it in his mouth, talking and laughing… We were so excited! J
Today friends had us round for lunch because they have a partially sighted friend, Jacques, who said he’d like to meet us to ‘put some wind in our sails’, as he put it. He went to mainstream schools, is married with three gorgeous kids and is a computer programmer. He said there are only two things he wishes he could: drive and make eye contact with people. Besides that, life is peachy.
This is the verse we are praying over Cameron’s life:
‘As for me, I look to the Lord for help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me. Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.’ Micah 7:7-8
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