Day 1: St Louis Children's Hospital Therapy Intensive
Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Marsh Naidoo (00:17):
Welcome to this episode of Raising Kellan the podcast. To motivate, inspire, and educate parents, raising kids with special needs. I am your host, Marsh Naidoo. And today we are in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm joined by Drake Box who's here to help us as we take Kellan to St. Louis Children's Hospital for his intensive. We woke up this morning on the 16th of March to be introduced to a new term social distancing (COVID-19). So what does that mean, guys? It means basically minimizing or no handshakes to stop the spread of the infectious coronavirus. For us out here in St. Louis, it meant that restaurants were closed to dine in patrons. It meant that the local schools here in St. Louis was closed as well. And through Facebook, we got to find out that the Berg School system was actually closed to the 31st of March. And as we already know, most large sporting events and gatherings have been canceled as well. It was actually eerie going through St. Louis because our roads that are normally busy like 44 and 64 were quiet and you could actually merge into traffic without anyone trying to run you over. We really fortunate that Drake Box has actually come along with us. Drake was actually meant to job shadow with Shriners but unfortunately, that had to be handled. And Drake, let me hand the mic over to you.
Drake Box (01:59):
Thank you for having me. Grateful to be back on another episode with you. It's always a good time. Yes we are indeed in St. Louis for Kellan's Intensive Therapy Week, and there's a lot of different things that I didn't know that went into his therapy week that I've just learned on the first day. So it's gonna definitely be a big learning experience and I'm grateful to be a part of this. I just appreciate the opportunity to watch as Kellan progresses with his cerebral palsy diagnosis and as he learns to be more independent and be more of the man as he says. So I'm just grateful to be able to sit here and learn through watching and actually got to participate in some of the therapy. So that was fun. Kind of start-up today was very interesting. And
Marsh Naidoo (02:44):
Drake, is there anything that stands out in your mind as far as the therapy is concerned and how it was delivered?
Drake Box (02:51):
Well, there are a lot of differences that I've noticed between when I had my intensive therapy and Kellan intensive therapy. There are a lot of different aspects and a lot of different ways to go through certain exercises that Kellan is available to now because of the advancement of therapy itself over the years and the advancement of technology and also the availability of different resources. And it is very apparent that these PTAs and PTs at St. Louis Children's Hospital definitely know what they're doing and they definitely care about each and every child that they take care of.
Marsh Naidoo (03:26):
So when we get here, we normally stay at the Airbnb and this time we are trying out a new location called The Grove, which is an eye-opener. We always had just won, but it's a neat neighborhood. There's lots of cool restaurants out like Soul Taco. But as I said, unfortunately I don't think we are going to get to try those this time. We're just trying to minimize our contact and as much as we hate to, we just strictly go into therapy using our hand sanitizer as much as possible coming home. And I'm grateful. We actually did a bit of shopping in Dyersburg before we got here to St. Louis, so we didn't have Toret about going in, getting groceries or worry too much about our meals. So we got that covered and grateful for that. We're gonna keep you guys posted on little tidbits as they happen through the week just to let y'all know how the week is progressing and to shout out to our friends and family in Dyersburg. We miss you guys so much and we hope to see you all soon. This is Marsh Naidoo together with Drake Box. Until we see you guys again, which should be tomorrow. As always, remember, get to the top of that mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.