Hospital 5 Day Assessments - Day 2 - Speech and PET Scan - 26th July

Robbie stayed in the Evelina overnight as he had a PET scan scheduled for after lunchtime today, Jane stayed with Robbie, and was woke at 0545hrs to give Robbie some breakfast, before his fasting started at 0600hrs.

First on the agenda today was a speech therapy assessment led by Lesley Baker, (Snr paediatric speech and language therapist)

Recordings are taken throughout the assessment and pretty much fell into three different sections, the first part of the assessment Lesley showed Robbie a set of flash cards with different images of different situations and was asked to describe what was happening in the picture, the second stage of the assessment was led by Lesley who showed Robbie a book of pictures, and told a story to go with the pictures, Robbie was then asked to try and tell the story back to Lesley, using the pictures associated with the story as a reminder of the story line… he managed this rather well.

The third part of the assessment involved Lesley reading out 50 words to Robbie and him being asked to repeat the words back. Lesley went on to explain these speech and voice results will be transcribed and analysed  and these would be used as a benchmark for future appointments and programming sessions post op.

In the early afternoon it was down to the imaging department for Robbie’s PET scan, this does involve a general anaesthetic and thankfully Mum decided to go with Robbie to ensure all was okay until they got a needle in to administer the drugs required to send him off to sleep. The PET scan (positron emission tomography) takes three dimensional images of the body, in Robbie’s case brain, I believe the main difference between these scan types against say MRI scans is they show actual tissue, and vital to the correct placement of the stimulator during surgery.

Robbie seemed very tired and a bit “spaced out” after the scan, as you would expect after anasthetic, however very quickly recovered and was back to his mischievous self.

MRI scan to follow tomorrow afternoon, with therapy assessments on the agenda for the morning, again this will be a 0600hrs fasting, so up again at 0545 for a bit of breakfast.