Sweet Sweet Therapy

Today saw the triumphant return of the Therapy Socks!

These aren't socks that I am knitting as therapy (although I can not deny that knitting them is therapeutic).

Rather, these are sock that I knit while I am in the waiting room of the pediatric therapy center while the Queen Bean is in one of her various therapy sessions.

These socks were set aside in August.  The Queen had been receiving services at the same therapy center since she was two months old.  Despite being an hours drive from our home we considered this center to be a bit of a second home.  The staff there was family.  We were devoted to our center despite the long drive we made twice a week.

Think about that for a second.

An hour's drive each way. 

Twice a week.

For three and a half years.

We were devoted.

But over the summer things changed at the therapy center.  I'm not going to speculate on the cause.  But something made the staff very unhappy.  And they left.  And the new therapists who were hired to replace them didn't stay for more than a few weeks at a time.  Rather than the consistency of therapists we had enjoyed for the first three year we had a steady stream of every changing therapists. 

Which doesn't work for the Queen.

So we left.

And it took four months to get in with a new therapy center.  We had to be evaluated.  And approved by insurance.  And fit into the schedule.  The process was ridiculously slow.  Especially the approved by insurance part.

Unfortunately the new center doesn't have any openings that allow us to double up two therapies on the same day.

So we now drive 20 minutes three times a week to reach the new center.  Fifteen minutes if traffic is cooperative.  I'm really appreciating staying on my side of the valley. 

We've been at the new center for six weeks.  And in that time I've sat in on all the Queen's sessions.  It has been a difficult transition as the Queen got back into the routine of therapy with new therapists who have different rules and preferences.  But I feel really good about the work that they are doing.  As much as I loved our old therapists sometimes change is good.

This week I was finally able to bow out of the sessions and allow the therapists to do their job solo. When I am in the room the Queen looks to me as the ultimate authority who can overrule the therapist, and who she can run to for comfort when she does not want to participate in the exercises.  Despite my efforts to redirect her back to the therapist I was still a distraction. 

But since we took the time for the Queen to get comfortable with the therapists she happily walks back with the therapists.  She did cry for fifteen minutes the first day, which was hard, but then she did more work for her physical therapist in one session than she had done in the entire previous five weeks.  She followed that up by making noise for the speech therapist and saying "baby".  And today while I sat and knit she actually drew horizontal lines as requested by her occupational therapist and she made great strides in her hand strength working with, well I don't know what it is, but if you put a ball in its mouth and squeeze its stomach the ball pops out.  Earlier this summer she couldn't squeeze it by herself.  But she did today.

And while she did that I knit a toe

I was super helpful to myself back in August when I abandoned this project.  I left no notes regarding what pattern row I was on when I put the sock in a temporary time out.

I like to set myself up for failure.

It took an embarrassing amount of time to figure it out.  But as it turns out I was much closer to finishing the first sock than I remembered (maybe House Gnomes took pity on it and knit a few rows here and there so it wouldn't be lonely?)

Sock one of the Therapy Socks is completed.

Ravelry tells me I started these socks on October 11th, 2016.

That's right.

2016.

I wonder how long it will take me to complete the second sock.

Maybe the House Gnomes do me a solid and help me out with some of the knitting.