Healing with the horses.....

Hippotherapy or equine therapy means treatment with the horses. For the first time when I heard about equine or hippo therapy from a fellow parent, I was not sure whether I should take Yatish for this therapy and whether it would help him. I had doubts like how would he sit up on the horse, would he be scared etc. I got the contact of Pushpa Bopaiah, who is the one of the very few qualified Hippo therapists in India. She was having her sessions in the army campus and the horses were from the army stables. The sprawling army grounds were an ideal setting for horse riding. Pushpa is a rare individual who has combined her profession of special education and her passion for horses, into her mission to help special children. The Healing Horses, equine therapeutic training programme run by Pushpa, provides therapy to children with varied disabilities.


http://www.healinghorses.in/index.htm

Once I met Pushpa, all my fears were allayed. Yatish was ecstatic seeing the horses. Pushpa ensured that he was safe and secure with the trainer holding him. It was a 45 minute session and the children rode around the grounds doing different strides, plucking leaves, counting numbers and playing with rings. Yatish absolutely loved it and looked forward to it every weekend.

The three dimensional rhythmic gait of the horse is very similar to human gait. So when the person rides, his gait is stimulated by movement of the pelvis –rotation, backwards and forwards and side to side movements. Hence it helps in improving posture, balance, mobility and also motor functions. It is also believed to improve cognitive, behavioural and communication skills. There is also some kind of bond which develops between the horse and the rider, which cannot be quite explained. Whenever I saw these kids on these huge horses, it looked as if instinctively the horses knew that they had a sick child on their back and they took utmost care to make their strides gentle. It was an amazing sight to watch.

The hippotherapy continued for quite some time, because this was one therapy which Yatish would do 100 percent without much fuss. He loved the whole routine of driving to the grounds, doing the therapy and having his breakfast at the army canteen.

Pushpa worked closely with Dr. Deepak Sharan, who is a renowned Orthopaedic surgeon and has done some pioneering work in spasticity release surgeries for cerebral palsy patients. She suggested that it would be a good idea to consult him and see if we could do something about Yatish’s spasticity.

Until now we had never thought about surgery and considering how tiny and frail Yatish was, doing any kind of invasive surgery was something we were not sure how Yatish would take. But we had very few choices. We had checked on Botox, but the effect of Botox stays only for a short time, so we have to keep giving it at regular intervals and the follow-up therapy had to be really good, to get the real benefit. There is also a drug called Baclophen, which is a muscle relaxant and an anti spastic agent, but it has its side effects and is generally not suitable for younger children.

I fixed up an appointment with Dr. Sharan and this was the beginning of a new chapter in our lives..

A whiff of strife!!

In my random research of CP treatments, I came across HBOT or Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) is a method of administering pure oxygen at greater than atmospheric pressure to a patient in order to improve or correct conditions. This is done in a pressurized chamber, so they can administer 10-15 times more oxygen, than normal atmospheric levels...

The theory is by providing increased levels of oxygen to neurologically impaired children; it helps in increased blood flow and reduces any pressure within the brain caused by swelling, restoring the functions of the blood brain barrier and cell membrane. It also neutralizes toxic products in the brain and enhances growth of new blood vessels.

HBOT is being used since 350 years (yes, you read it right!) even before oxygen was discovered!!! It found currency in treating decompression sickness in deep sea divers. Later it was used to treat many conditions including CP.

For me the challenge was to find a facility in Bangalore. There are very few private hospitals in India which provide hyperbaric medicine. Most of the chambers are in Military hospitals.

http://www.hyperbaricindia.com/hyperbaric_location_in_india.php

I came to know that the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Bangalore had a
hyperbaric oxygen chamber, but then it was not easily accessible to civilians. However we still thought we should give it a try. We met Lt. Col Dr. KK Tripathi who was heading the hyperbaric medicine department. He was not very convinced that it would help Yatish, firstly because, the equipment they were using was pretty ancient (1970s make) and not suited for small children and they had not treated any CP kids. They were predominantly using it to treat frost bites, diabetic ulcers and patients who had undergone heart surgeries. But I still wanted to try, because I had read so much about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbaric_medicine

After completing the formalities, we signed up for 10 sessions to begin with, it usually takes about 40 -50 sessions to show any results. The session would be of 45 minutes duration. The chamber had a capacity to take 6 people. You had to wear a mask, connected to oxygen supply pipes. In our case, I had to sit in the chamber with Yatish on my lap, holding the mask over his face, since they did not have kid sized masks and it was an ordeal to hold the mask in place and that too for 45 minutes (I was paranoid to lose even one cc of the precious gas!). So I struggled in that chamber, feeling claustrophobic, since I would not be wearing any mask myself and also of catching any infections from other patients using the chamber, because hyperbaric medicine was the last resort for many of these patients many of whom had glaring wounds and lesions. I cannot quite put in words my state of mind, but I still did it, thinking it might help Yatish somehow.

In order to pass time (F-O-R-T-Y F-I-V-E mins), I started reading books for Yatish, little knowing that I had an eager audience even in that dungeon. One day I could not take Yatish to the session, he was not feeling up to it. So the next day when I went for the session, this old man, who had gangrene on his foot, and who had never acknowledged our presence before, came to me and said “daughter, you will never know how your stories have helped me to keep going! Even though they are simple kid stories, I look forward to them eagerly, thank you for helping me; it has made my life a little bearable”!

To think of it I read those stories just to make my life more bearable and to distract Yatish from that ugly mask. Strange are the ways of life!!!

The goals we were looking for were improvement in speech and improved motor skills. But even after 20 sessions, we were not quite there and moreover, we were on borrowed time. According to the doctor ,there were lot of people non-civilians who were having chronic conditions and this therapy would benefit them and compared to that Yatish’s condition was not pressing!!

The standard is 40 – 50 sessions, so I will definitely give it one more shot, whenever it is possible to do so.....maybe in a better kid friendly facility.....