Leaving Town

It is time for my husband and I to get away, leaving V at home with her caregivers. Well in advance, I post overnight shift opportunities for her usual daytime staff. I keep a file on my computer of documents I will update and print out each time we go out of town. These include a form that gives my written permission for support staff to authorize emergency medical treatment in my absence, with hospital preferences. I leave printed instructions regarding meals and appointments for V and check her medications to make sure that there is enough to last until I return. Usually this involves a trip to the pharmacy to refill something before I go. There are grocery shopping trips to make sure that I leave enough fresh and frozen food for all of her meals and snacks to last until I return. I check the dash of the vehicle that will be used in our absence and make sure it doesn't need oil and the battery has a strong charge. The last time I went out of town for an overnight, the car battery died in a park, requiring the staff to get a jump start from Park Police. Yikes!
Well, there is so much to do and worry about before I leave home that I almost need the vacation by the time I go. I exchange phone calls and texts with the staff each day to see how things went and to answer any questions that come up. Her routines continue without me. This makes my absence easier on her. This is how she is part of the family but lives her own life, while I have my independence too. I won't always be with her, so it is good that she can be okay away from me for a week now and then. I will tell her I am going away today and I will say goodbye tomorrow before I go. She won't like it, but she will be okay until I return. 

Dynavox Maestro - Seven months later

When the Dynavox representative came out for the training, the most valuable item she provided was a programming cheat sheet. It made it very easy and quick for our speech therapist and I to program the Maestro in the way that we wanted to for V.
At first, V did not want to use the device for lessons, but understood that the purpose of the device was to communicate. She started using it right away to choose what to eat for breakfast. Then she began to use it to indicate where she wanted to go in the community, and more specifically, what she wanted to do at that location. For example, if she chooses the library as her destination, she can indicate if she wants to look for a movie, a book or look at magazines. She tells us if she would rather go to Chick-fil-A or Chipotle Grill for lunch and then she indicates her preferred menu items with the device. At home she can choose her leisure activity with the Maestro or tell us that she wants to rest.
We have to do a lot of modeling to encourage her to use the device as opposed to the gestures or actions she has used in the past to indicate her preferences. However, the speech therapist said that she learned to navigate around the pages in the device to find what she wants to say much more quickly than she had anticipated. V had learned as much in two months with the Maestro as the SLP had expected her to learn in a year!
As V masters the choices that have been programmed for her, we continue to add to her choices and to allow the complexity of her communications to grow. She is now willing to use the device during speech sessions with her therapist.
I am very happy with V's progress on the Dynavox Maestro. It has given her the ability to express her wishes in ways that she was never able to do before. I look forward to the time that she is able to better express her feelings with the device, both physical and emotional.