Page 24 - BeaufortMemorial

Twice a week for six years, Barbara Turner made the 25-mile trek from Blufton to Beaufort to take her daugh-ter Julia to therapy at HealthLink for Children, Beaufort Memorial Hospital’s pediatric rehabilitation center. Today, she drives just fve minutes down the road to HealthLink’s new Blufton facility.

“It has made such a huge diference in our lives,” Turner says. “It was difcult picking her up after school every Tuesday and Tursday and driving 45 minutes to Beaufort. We wouldn’t get home until 7 p.m. Tat’s a long day for a little girl.” Now 7, Julia is an active, social kin-dergartner at Okatie Elementary School. Despite her disabilities, she is in a main-stream classroom, continuing to make progress.

Born with hip dysplasia, Julia spent the frst fve months of her life in a harness to correct the problem. When that didn’t

work, she underwent surgery, leaving her in a body cast for two months and a brace for three months after that.

“She came out of it as foppy as a rag doll,” Turner says. “We thought it was because her body had been confned for so long.”

Solving the mystery

When she didn’t start walking by the time she was 18 months old, Julia’s doctor rec-ommended physical therapy. An MRI later revealed she had sufered a brain injury as an infant. Te injury, called periventricu-lar leukomalacia, results in neurological problems, especially those that involve movements such as sitting, crawling and walking.

“Speech didn’t come either,” Turner says. “She wasn’t talking or even making sounds.”

At age 3, Julia was diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech, a condition

Having a HealthLink facility in Blufton saves families hours

of driving every week.

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