Marcus will transition from day therapy to outpatient therapy in the coming weeks. We’ve long been focused on three areas in treatment: physical, occupational, and speech. Marcus has progressed very far in occupational and speech therapy to the point that he can graduate from outpatient therapy. He will get most of the focus on physical therapy, while for the other two, we will be using devices to try to teach him how to communicate while he is nonverbal.

For speech therapy, they want us to continue working on his swallowing by giving him food throughout the day. At a minimum, they want it to be twice a day. A lot of the speech therapy techniques are things that we can do with him to help his progression.

This change is a significant development, and we are happy Marcus is progressing. His doctor has had many patients like Marcus, who had two or three stints with inpatient therapy. The therapy process is a cycle: inpatient, treatment, and outpatient. As Marcus hits certain milestones, we will go through this process as often as needed until they deem him as close to normal as he will be or if they say he’s plateaued and needs a break.