Brave Enough To Be Bliss

Read through these excerpts from the evaluation like you were her parent, knowing these problems have existed since at least the second concussion on February 1, 2011, and this testing was conducted on April 4, 2015. And when you get to the expected performance based on age, remember she was almost 19 years old at the time of the evaluation. • Accommodation-Focusing Ability: These deficiencies will increase the effort when copying from one place to another, induce visual fatigue and avoidance of close work. In addition, Kylee’s visual focusing difficulty will make it more difficult for her to focus her attention and may contribute to behaviors that appear similar to attention deficit disorder (ADD). • Eye Teaming Ability: Deficiencies in eye teaming ability will cause Kylee to use excess effort to take in and process visual information and will reduce her ability to sustain visual attention. They will also negatively influence the ability to make accurate spatial judgments, to determine where objects are in space in relationship to her and to each other, and to move through space securely and effectively. • Wold Visuo-Motor Test: This performance is at an 8-year-old level in time but that of a 17-year-old age level in errors. This indicates the task is hard and requires more energy than Kylee has in reserve. Kylee may be frustrated and not care about her performance. • Wold Sentence Copy Test: Of greatest concern is that she looked up every 3.5 letters. While it is clear that she knows simple words like “Four men and a…” she no longer trusts her visual memory. In addition, she omitted a word, added a letter to the word “cloud” to write “clould” and reversed the “b” in “behind” making it “dehind.” These are visual errors of discrimination. Good eye movement control and focus flexibility are the major physiological components of visual discrimination. Her white knuckled grip and finger hyper extension indicates her effort when writing and copying. Kylee shifted her body completely to the left of the paper for most of the tests. This indicates that crossing the midline is difficult for her. • Directional Concepts: Compared to other children her age, Kylee has difficulty discriminating correctly oriented letters and numbers from their mirror images. • The Piaget Right/Left Awareness Test: Performance was at the 6-year-old expectancy. Kylee demonstrated confusion when asked to identify the sidedness of her own body, concept of mirror image and reversibility, and relative direction when two or more objects are present. This is important because these problems may result in difficulties reading and interpreting maps, diagrams and instructions. • Visual Form Perception: Deficiencies in visual form discrimination result in difficulty recognizing similar forms, shapes or words, making valid visual judgments, identifying relevant information, and coming to logical conclusions.

As if the testing wasn’t eye opening enough, no pun intended, the meeting where the doctor went through all the details was even more so. This explained why she couldn’t read and comprehend. She had been using a software program that would read to her because it was impossible for her to read for school and actually remember anything she had read. The doctor explained it was so hard for her to actually decipher the words properly that her brain couldn’t possibly retain any of the information ; she was just trying to see the letters for her brain to figure out what the word was and that was exhausting, so remembering at that point wasn’t a possibility. It was great news because there was hope for some help, but at the same time, as a parent it was heartbreaking how difficult it had been for her. I wondered how she had made it through at all. In addition to going through the report, she had me stand at the door with it propped open so I could look at it and see it was straight and then run my hand down the straight edge of it. It was a standard door that easily closed within the frame, just a regular door like any other. She then had me put on glasses that would simulate Kylee’s visual challenges and look at the door and run my hand back down the straight edge of it. It was the

87