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Abby Ortiz' Story Volunteers from DePaul

Mr. and Mrs. Ortiz welcomed a new baby girl into their family in September 2001. Immediately after her birth, they spent long nights under bright hospital lights, listening to one doctor after another rattle off medical jargon in a language they could barely understand. Abby was born with Spina Bifida, a neural tube defect involving incomplete development of the brain, spinal cord, and/or their protective coverings that causes permanent damage to nerves resulting in varying degrees of paralysis of the lower limbs. In the first hours and days of her life, Abby would need spinal surgery, a shunt to drain the fluid building inside her brain, and a plan for extensive medical care and therapy.

A team of Early Intervention therapists at El Valor evaluated Abby shortly after she turned two months old. A physical therapist from El Valor first visited her home once a week to teach Abby's parents how to find comfortable positions for Abby's important tasks of sleeping and nursing, and how to provide daily stretching exercises for her legs so that Abby could learn to walk on her own. As the weeks and months passed, a physical therapist from El Valor would be her guide for more complicated feeding tasks, reaching for and grasping her favorite toys and rattles, and building the strength and muscle control to sit for play, bathing, and other important daily activities.

As Abby was growing every day and smiling, and taking in everything around her, the Ortiz' encountered many challenges. She was sick more often in her first year of life than most children. She could spike a fever or have an infection on any given day. Abby was visited by El Valor developmental therapists who helped the family tackle important questions, and introduced Abby to toys that could support her learning and entice her to reach more, to roll or crawl a little further, and to babble her first sounds. She learned how to hold her own spoon, drink juice from a cup, and to point to get what she wanted instead of crying.

At age 2, Abby's family was concerned that she only made a few sounds, and could only say "ma" and "pa" to communicate with them. A fourth therapist from El Valor joined her team, a speech and language therapist, who visited her weekly and collaborated with her developmental therapists to develop home speech activities, to relax the very tight muscles in her mouth and lips, and to help her family think about active communication in creative ways. Abby started tell her family what she needed and wanted with specific gestures and pictures, and later, could pair and eventually replace those tools with words.

The Ortiz family is grateful to El Valor's staff therapists for teaching them communication techniques that have not only been helpful with Abby, but helpful to the rest of the family as well. What makes El Valor's team different, according to Mrs. Ortiz, is that "the therapists really care about Abby, they are so warm, you can see it in their eyes and in their interactions with her, and Abby loves them as well, she tries so hard for them." Mrs. Ortiz can really tell the difference the therapists have made in Abby's progress. According to Mrs. Ortiz, she knows of someone else in her husband's family in Mexico who has a child of Abby's same age with Spina Bifida; "We went to visit, and Abby was so much more advanced then her cousin, it really made us realize how lucky we are to have El Valor."

This year Abby will celebrate her third birthday, and with the help of therapists from El Valor, and assistance of a walker, she walks around her neighborhood with confidence. At home she walks short distances on her own. She feeds herself independently, and when finished, will ask if she can have "candy" or a "cookie." She helps to dress and undress herself, loves to brush her teeth, plays and watches movies with her older brother. She knows routines, can say what she wants and does not want, shares with her peers, and separates a few steps more from her mother every day.

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