LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — With four locations around central Kentucky, Marshall Pediatric Therapy offers a variety of therapeutic services. That includes an intensive program, offered only at their Lexington location.
Occupational therapist Meredith Proctor and physical therapist Chloe Isaacs started the program in June 2024 with the goal of providing an accessible intensive therapy option for families in and around central Kentucky.
“We're really trying to continue to grow the program and reach people outside of the Lexington area,” Proctor said.
The Lexington-based intensive program provided an opportunity for John and Abbigale Stewart, who were looking for an intensive therapy for their 16-month-old John-Baylor.
“We were actually looking at some out-of-state programs,” John explained. “That would have been a difficult task to travel out of state every day or even take off work to stay out of state. We heard about this one in Lexington, which is a lot closer to our home, and we were able to get worked in and transferred over here.”
John-Baylor was born with PMM2-CDG, a super-rare condition that affects his muscles and ability to support himself. The condition is so rare that John-Baylor was actually the first diagnosis in Kentucky. Now, he’s in his final week of the Marshall intensive therapy program.
“We had heard that intensive therapy can really offer just kind of a jumpstart into achieving those milestones,” added John. “That was something we were interested in giving a try to see if it was going to be beneficial for him.”
These intensive sessions pack therapy into a shorter timeframe. This allows families to travel for a short period with a lot of sessions, as opposed to having to travel back and forth for a longer period of time.
“In regular therapy, we're going to see a kid one to two times a week over a 3-month period versus in an intensive, we're going to see them four to five times a week in a 3-week period,” said Proctor. “We're going to see a lot more progress in a lot shorter amount of time.”
“If a child's not sitting, then usually by the end of three weeks we want to be sitting as opposed to traditional therapy it might take, you know, three or four months to get there,” added Isaacs. “What we expect is once a family leaves here for intensive is to immediately pick back up like with their regular therapy to help them maintain that skill.”
The primary goal for John-Baylor was to get him sitting by himself. Both the therapists and his parents have seen major improvements in the past few weeks.
“He's blown us away with the progress that he has made,” Isaacs shared. “I mean, he came in and he wasn't able to sit up.”
“I think mid last week he was able to sit for three whole minutes without losing his balance, which is super incredible,” said Proctor.
These improvements carry over to time at home as well.
“I've seen a lot of progress at home just with day-to-day tasks, sitting in his high chair,” John said. “It's been really encouraging to see the progress that he's made.”
“He's able to play more with his sisters, he's had improvement with eating just all-around way stronger,” added Abbigale. “I just feel like he's responded really well and he's doing things that we were told he may never do, and we're just so grateful.”
You can schedule an evaluation for an intensive therapy journey here. If you have more questions about whether intensive therapy might be right for your child, you can find those answers here.
