The birth of Nelly was complicated and immediately she was born she had to be put in the incubator. When her parents took away from the hospital, everything seemed fine, but only for the first six months.
“She was late in terms of her movements and speech and we suspected that something was not right. When she was 14 months old, the doctors diagnosed our daughter with cerebral palsy,”
says the mother. There followed repeated stays in Kováčová and exercises using the Vojta method, but the parents were not satisfied by the results.
Nelly had physical problems and often fell. At five years of age she was included in a foreign clinical study. The Cord Blood Center included Nelly in the Helping Hand programme and as part of it she completed three stays in the United States in one of the most prestigious American Hospitals, Duke University Hospital. The cost of travelling and the stay were paid for by the Cord Blood Center. During one of them, she had an infusion of her own cord blood.
“Nelly is a clever girl who is making great strides thanks to the support that she is receiving at home. She is cheerful, determined and very satisfied with her own successes,”
said the attending doctor in the assessment report from the neurological examination in the USA.
Nelly has taken great steps forward over the last two years. In September 2014, she began to attend primary school, and as she is in a class with healthy children, she tries to equal them. The first day at school she was alone, and after she returned she said:
Imagine! I ate my soup all by myself!”
She also handles the curriculum well. Another step forward is that she has learned to fall on her knees and stop herself with her hands, thereby reducing the risk of injury. Her articulation and fine motor skills are improving; she is writing in separate letters and is generally more independent. The greatest success to be considered is that she has gradually begun to walk alone.
