Intensive Pediatric Therapy

There is absolutely nothing worse in life than having a sick child. And there is no greater tragedy than not being able to provide help, treatment and care for a sick child in need. I had the honor to meet a woman who lived through this, and with her entrepreneurial spirit and a mother’s unwillingness to give up, she found a way to help her own child as well as others. Eileen de Oliveira was a successful business woman enjoying life with her husband and two children. And then the unthinkable happened. She gave birth to 27 week premie triplets, 2 boys and a girl. The girl passed after 3 weeks and one of the boys, Lucas, the last triplet, had cerebral palsy. Doctors told her he has mental retardation, will experience hearing loss, won’t grow, won’t walk and will have severe learning disabilities. At 18 months, Lucas could not sit up and he couldn’t properly crawl (he can only do commando crawling with no weight on his legs).

Her insurance paid for physical therapy 3 times a week of 30 minute sessions each time. She found this to be incredibly inadequate because after set up and warming up, Lucas only had 15 minutes of good work. Not only was insurance and cost a deterrent, she found that most doctors were unwilling to be responsible for a false sense of hope so they opt to only give worse case scenarios. She began researching other options and found a private clinic in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida that provided intense therapy for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week for 3 weeks. After one week of balancing and coordination work, Lucas was crawling. After 3 weeks, he took 7 steps on his own. The brain was still high functioning but required patterning to give it the proper information to be put to use. This therapy was about repetition and teaching every little thing, such as where the head is on the body – things you take for granted. Through repetition and patterning, parts of the brain now takes on functions it was not meant for.

It was obvious Eileen wanted to continue this remarkable therapy and progress but when she went back to sign up for another 3 weeks of therapy, she found the clinic had closed. She spoke to the owner, who lives in California. She decided to close the clinic because she was not able to manage the Florida clinic from California. That is when Eileen put her business cap on and decided to buy all the equipment and hire the therapist and opened her own clinic, Therapies 4 Kids.

The type of therapy offered at her clinic, called Intensive Suit Program, is not covered by insurance and it is not cheap. It is $125 an hour, so for a 4 week session it is $10,000. Some insurance companies will reimburse the fees after progress can be proven. But this is still a burden most families cannot afford. That is why Eileen also founded the organization, Bright Steps Forward which raises money to help families in need. There is a sponsorship program where you can directly give to a specified child and watch his or her progress through the course of therapy.

Lucus is now in Kindergarten and is walking, talking, reading and doing math. Brain scans do not reflect what he is able to perform, they show him to be less functioning than he actually is. Intensive Suit Program is not just for cerebral palsy, it is also effective for Down Syndrome, Developmental Delays, Autism, Traumatic Brain Injuries, Near Drowning, Near Hanging, and Shaken Baby Syndrome.

More information about Therapies 4 Kids and the Intensive Suit Program

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