Where do you start?

This blog has been set up to follow our journey with our youngest child, Corbin. Corbin has Spastic Diplegia, a form of Cerebral Palsy, as a result of bilateral Peri Ventricular Leukomalacia.

We have been doing a revolutionary "therapy" called Advanced Biomechanical Rehabilitation or ABR for short (www.blyum.com) since November 2006. And this blog is an endeavour to raise awareness of this wonderful rehabilitation technique, the "carrot" for us being a discount in our costs if we blog regularly.

There have been huge mountains to climb and obstacles to navigate already in Corbins first 6 years of life but the following is a very, very brief summary to bring you up to speed.

Corbin was born in September 2003, 12 weeks early, weighing a whopping 1140 grams (slightly more "cooked" and slightly bigger than our eldest son who weighed in at 1080 grams). He was a very healthy premature baby and I thought after the shitty deal we had first time round with our eldest son, that all would be fine for Corbin. Well it wasn't. A routine brain scan at birth revealed Corbin had Bilateral Peri Ventricular Leukomalacia (in English this means "around the brain there are white masses") PVL is caused by a lack of blood supply to the brain and suprisingly enough is not necessarily due to his prematurity!!! As a result of PVL Corbin has spastic diplegia, one of the milder forms of Cerebral Palsy.

For those of you who know nothing about Cerebral Palsy, the orthodox medical profession say that diplegia primarily affects the legs. For Corbin this means that he can not stand or walk independantly. We were told in May 2006 by our Paeditrician that it would be "highly unlikely" that Corbin would ever walk independantly. Because I am a highly stubborn, and yes sometimes pigheaded individual, I was not going to lie down and let that be Corbins lot in life. Those 2 words "highly unlikely" were what led me to ABR.

Corbin is a bright little button who's "issues" are purely physical. His cognitive ability is at an age appropriate level, he has full speech funcion, has bladder/bowel control and has never had seizures which are all great things in the overall scope of Cerebral Palsy. But he is still a little boy having to deal with the frustrations of legs that wont work the way they should, the inability to participate or keep up with his peers, grazed and callused knees, legs and knuckles from crawling, pain and fatigue, the general ignorance and stupidity of mankind, hours of therapy each week and yes a sometimes cranky mum.

This blog will follow both our ABR journey and some of the highs and lows of living with Diplegia. I hope you enjoy it.