Ilan on the move

It has again been a while since we posted an update. These pictures were taken in Feb '10 at Purim. Jarone dressed Ilan in the pirate costume and then later Ilan and Dad went for a walk on the boardwalk near Venice Beach!

Ilan is starting to take control of his life. He is more independent getting in and out of bed, going up and down stairs, expressing his needs/desires with hand motions and backing it up with a few words. His speech has improved by leaps and bounds the past few months (albeit he does have quite a ways to go yet). He does situps, pushups and loves to just clown around.

Most importantly he has begun to have his own opinion on most every subject, which is actually very good - it took us almost 6 months looking for shoes for him as he did not like any of the shoes we checked out; just last week he finally bought 2 pairs!!

At therapy, he has begun to play a guitar with nylon strings and remembers many of the chords by himself! We are hoping to get him a guitar soon.

During his "school lessons" he is beginning to excel and moving on to more advanced subjects.

He enjoys chatting online with friends - thank you to all of you that spend time chatting with him online.

Also, thank you for reading Ilan's blog.

Happy Passover and Happy Easter to all!

Happy New Year

We took a long time to get back to posting and have lots of exciting information to report about Ilan.

Ilan is doing great! He has gotten back to his jovial, sociable self. He enjoys company and loves to go outdoors. During the past few months, he:

- now walks about 150ft with the aid of a walker

- stands for an hour in a new special stander that we built for him that allows him to kick a soccer ball with his legs (that he does very well), balance on one leg, and also to balance by himself (without support) for about a minute

- eats 95% of his meals orally, but so far only 20-25% of his liquid requirements

- stands up and walks 2-3 steps by himself without support

- spends more time on AIM and Facebook chatting with his friends

- takes speech therapy which is helping him along to begin speaking a few words quite clearly and attempt to pronounce more words

- will begin pool/swim therapy next week at Northridge hospital

- hopefully will get vision therapy soon that he really needs in order to help him read more than 2-3 words

- visited Milken, where he was kindly invited to throw the 1st ball for dodge-ball in color wars, and thoroughly enjoyed himself; his senior classmates kindly invited him to join them for a party this coming Thursday.

- spent shabbat dinner at a family friend's house

- **went go-carting in Palm Springs (as a passenger with Dad) and at the 1st turn almost fell out of the cart till he learned how to hold on to his steering wheel!

- **rode an ATV by himself for about 100 meters!

**he absolutely loved these rides

Ilan is also beginning to assert himself by informing us if he does not like or does not want to do something; previously, he was quite passive and acquiesced to everything we asked him to do!

Family-wise, David is working hard in Century City, Jarone completed his mid-Junior year semester at USC, and Michal recently interviewed with Milken for high school.

Thank you for your patience and coming back to read Ilan's blog site.

We wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, Safe, Peaceful and Fruitful New Year!!

Ilan's Trake Opening is closed

Last Thursday Ilan went to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica as an outpatient and had his trake opening surgically closed. He had a few rough times for 2 days after the surgery but bounced back shortly thereafter to the smiling funloving Ilan that we all know.

He has begun to strengthen his leg muscles with extra exercises at home; we have set a goal that within a week or two his legs will be so strong that Ilan will feel comfortable in asking us to take him for a short walk without his wheelchair?!

Yesterday he gave us a pleasant surprise and scare - he was alone in the room with his wheelchair close to the bed, unlocked. Apparently he was in an adventurous mood because when Estelle returned to the room she found him sitting in the wheelchair 6-8 feet away from the bed; he had transferred himself to the chair and found a way to move the chair with his legs!!

In therapy he is doing very well. In physical therapy he continues to make great advances - he strides quite confidently with the help of a walker and they had him weaving thru an "obstacle course" to make it more challenging; in speech therapy he is making progress albeit slow and is able to say a few words quite clearly; vision therapy has not yet been provided to him even though he urgently needs same.

Ilan is most excited when he goes out and meets some of his friends. He was at the Clippers/

Maccabi Elektra basketball game last week and several of his Milken friends came by to say hello. On Sunday, even though he was still recovering from surgery, he was determined to go and went to a fashion show at Milken that was done by the students!

Thank you for reading about Ilan's progress and cheering him on when you see him. We hope that soon he will be better able to verbally share his thoughts and feelings with us all.

Happy Birthday Ilan

Ilan recently celebrated his 17th Birthday and his Milken classmates were instrumental in making sure that he really celebrated it. Two of the boys, Sam and Max, and their family put on a concert at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood to honor Ilan's birthday. Sam and Max and their band played unbelievably great music for over an hour. Many of Ilan's friends and teachers from Sinai Akiba and Milken H.S were very kind to attend, taking time off from their busy schedules. Ilan had a huge smile on his face thru the entire session - he stood up at times and swayed to the music, clapped, and moved his hands up/down/around.

They sang happy birthday to Ilan and gave him a present along with cup cakes and then mushed one of the cupcakes into Ilan's mouth - Ilan did not miss a beat and promptly hugged his brother Jarone and in turn mushed Jarone's cheeks too with all the stuff on his (Ilan's) face, and then triumphantly laughed.

THANK YOU, SAM/MAX/AND FAMILY FOR GIVING ILAN SUCH A WONDERFUL TIME FOR HIS BIRTHDAY!!

Following is a brief update on Ilan:

- he has passed all the required swallow tests and hopefully next week his trake opening will be closed permanently.

- he is busy with many therapies (physical, occupational, and speech) which are all giving Ilan the opportunity to improve in all aspects. He is now walking a little easier with less help, he is beginning to pronounce a few words, he has been doing a few swimming sessions, etc.

- he is far more comfortable in moving his body to reach items a little distance away but within his reach.

-he is going on AIM with friends and doing his best to write to them - we have found that he needs vision therapy to help him read and type; he should be starting vision therapy soon

- he is now eating a lot more items, including rice pudding, corn dogs, hot dogs, chicken nuggets and is more willing to try other things at least once!

In short, Ilan is showing his determination to get better and we need to help him further build his stamina to do things for longer periods.

We wish all Ilan's friends, teachers, realtives and well-wishers a year filled with happiness, health, laughter and prosperity.

Speedo Times are here again

Earlier this week at therapy Ilan was made to walk up and down stairs for the 1st time. Ilan took this challenge very seriously and performed very well. He also stood up by himself and walked along the inside of parallel bars all by himself. Today he propelled himself on a new wheelchair along the hallways by turning the wheels himself!

On Tuesday of this week Ilan donned his speedo and had swim therapy for almost an hour with the kind assistance of waterpolo coach Niall, Jarone and Michal. Ilan had a huge smile on his face for the entire session and also for the rest of the day. He was made to walk across the pool, lay on his back and kick his legs, and also lay on his stomach and kick his legs. At first he was quite apprehensive of these exercises but with a little coaxing and reassuring comments from his brother, sister and coach Niall, he let go and willingly participated and then some. He will probably get in the pool again this weekend!!

Ilan is making a concentrated effort to begin to speak. He gets on the computer by himself and is determined to soon have private AIM chats with friends by typing by himself!

Wii - Success!!

Watching Ilan miraculously improve himself during these past few weeks has been very rewarding. When we 1st bought the Wii for Ilan we had difficulty getting him to play it because he was very frustrated at being unable to move his hands as needed by the Wii - last evening we experienced the exact opposite, Ilan was so excited and happy to be playing golf, by himself on the Wii that he did not want to stop playing!!!!

This past weekend we took him to watch the USC Trojan football team practices and tonight we will go to a football practice game - Jarone is an assistant with the team and Ilan is constantly on the lookout to watch him, more so than the team. Jarone requested all the star players to autograph Ilan's Tshirt which they most willingly did, including Coach Pete Carroll!! Ilan was extremely happy for getting all the autographs.

July 10th - a historic day for Ilan.

Yesterday, Friday July 10th 2009, was a very important day for Ilan.

Earlier this week we received results from Ilan's recent sleep test informing us that he passed with flying colors. So, yesterday morning Ilan was taken to the ENT specialist for a followup examination.

Well, I arrived home around 2:45pm and asked Estelle what had happened at the ENT meeting. She responded that Ilan would tell me (Ilan was sleeping at the time!).

So around 4:00pm Ilan woke up and I went to his room - I found him with a big triumphant smile on his face and pointing with his index fingers to his throat area. He had a gauze bandage there:

the TRAKE that he had had in place in his throat for the past 22 months was REMOVED!

This is a major achievement for Ilan as this will alllow him to safely swim (with proper protection near his throat) in a pool and will hopefully jump start his ability to speak!!!!

Have great summer.