Jayden Achieves 1st in Engineering & Business Studies

Dealing with anxiety.

Jayden is a highly motivated learner with clear goals for his future. That unfortunately came with intense anxieties, hence, when you mix a lifelong bleeding disorder, autism, anxious feelings, and teenage hormones, that’s a recipe for enormous meltdowns. Due to his autism, he is sensitive to criticism, gets easily frustrated, has anxiety attacks and at times lacks self confidence. Whilst Jayden experienced a bleed-free life since starting Hemlibra, he still had some anxieties with his weekly injections as there would be times where the injection site caused him some discomfort. So, in between Jayden’s schooling, I organised for Jayden to receive weekly psychology sessions with a Clinical Psychologist at Sydney Children’s Hospital to help with managing his severe anxiety.

It was vital to stay on top of his mental health and well-being, especially during the adolescent years and more so during the current Covid-19 pandemic. This gave him access to a professional therapist who had extensive knowledge helping him to overcome the anxious feelings he had around his education, health, future goals, and relationships with family and his peers. A combination of continued work with his psychologist, as well as occupational therapy using sensory techniques was beneficial to help reduce Jayden’s anxiety and ability to self regulate.

Improving Information & Sensory Processing, Vestibular (Movement & Balance), Proprioceptive (Body Position) Processing, and Expressive-Receptive Language Disorder.

Since 2013, Jayden participated in regular Occupational and Speech Therapy at Kickstart Kids Therapy in Randwick to help improve the difficulties he had with his multiple diagnosis. The center focuses on therapy for children and young people that identifies and treats not only the presenting issues but the underlying causes for each child. Specific therapy for Jayden focused on a number of areas, particularly his ability to process sensory information in order to regulate his levels of attention across the day, which helps to manage his anxiety and increase focus and concentration. Occupational Therapy also aimed at building Jayden’s gross and fine motor skills, and specifics on his handwriting including letter formations, planning, sequencing and completing written expression. Speech Therapy worked through Jayden’s receptive-expressive language disorder, as well as understanding social cues / interactions and sarcasm, all of which impacts on his self esteem. With social distancing in place, we were able to participate via telehealth which was invaluable to Jayden’s progress. These regular therapies has helped calm his nervous system and increase confidence in himself which is evident in his half yearly reports.

Using a laptop to overcome Dyspraxia and Dysgraphia.

Jayden’s handwriting challenges were continuing to impact significantly on his ability to complete school work to the level of his peers. His occupational therapist recognised that he presented with dyspraxia, a condition that is impacting on his fine and gross motor skills, affecting his ability to complete handwriting tasks. He also presents with dysgraphia, a writing disability, where Jayden finds it difficult to form letters or write within a defined space. These challenges greatly impacts on his written language. With both diagnosis, Jayden struggles to plan, organise and create pieces of handwriting at age expected level.

Occupational Therapy aimed to address his challenges, and also involved using a laptop in order to complete written expression tasks. The quality and speed of Jayden’s work is considerably greater when typing on a laptop compared to using pen and paper. Witnessing this significant improvement, we submitted Jayden’s occupational therapy progress reports to Randwick Boys High School, and requested for them to allow Jayden to use a laptop to complete all his school tasks. With their approval, we then applied for a laptop through the Variety’s Education Technology Grant. Thankfully, Variety Children’s Charity awarded Jayden with a lightweight laptop that met both his writing disability and his bleeding disorder (the recurrent internal bleeds in his wrists and finger joints throughout his childhood life resulted in weakness and loss of strength in his hands).

Hemlibra creating extra time.

With Jayden’s new way of haemophilia management, it meant he didn’t need to spend 45 minutes of his day connected to an infusion pump for three times a week. With Hemlibra, it was a simple tiny needle injected into his stomach fat weekly that actually worked to prevent bleeding episodes. He took this new medical routine with some adjustments but eventually he saw the benefits and hasn’t looked back ever since.