Telethon of Stars: 8-month-old Dottie’s family thankful for UTM Infant Stimulation | News

Telethon of Stars: 8-month-old Dottie's family thankful for UTM Infant Stimulation | News


PADUCAH — The 68th annual Lion’s Club Telethon of Stars is drawing closer and closer, and ahead of the big night we sat down with some of the families directly impacted by your donations. Three groups use your donations to fund their evolving operational needs — Easterseals West Kentucky, UTM Infant Stimulation, and Coleman Tri-County Services.



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Dottie Grace Tibbs.




UTM Infant Stim serves up to 200 northwest Tennessee families a month — the program has 12 developmental therapists, with each one logging about 100 miles a month. During the visits the therapists are actually in the homes of their patients, working with the child as well as their parents on what the parent sees needs improvement to help them live better, healthier lives.

We sat in on a weekly visit with Dottie Grace Tibbs and her family. Dottie is an 8-month-old who’s defying all odds. At days old, she was diagnosed with Pompe Disease.

Her mother, Kassadie Tibbs explained what Dottie was like after birth, “When she was born she was also just real floppy, she was real frogged like. She had real low muscle tone. So they took her to the NICU, they hooked her up to oxygen. They were monitoring her.”

They soon learned about Pompe Disease. It’s genetic condition in which a complex sugar builds up in the lysosomes of the body’s cells. This disease requires a weekly visit to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis for an infusion.

“We have to do it to help her because without it, she wouldn’t be here. Usually around 6 months is when the life expectancy is and I mean here she is fixing to be almost 8 months old,” said Kassadie.

At 8 months old, she’s now learning and growing every day. Dottie’s weekly schedule includes her infusion in Memphis, TN, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and her developmental therapy with UTM Infant Stim.



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Catelyn Parker is Dottie’s developmental therapist, and each week Catelyn is physically in the home with Dottie and her parents working.

“I’ve gotten to see her hold her head up — we started out, she couldn’t even hold her head up. We started a lot of tummy time, and just getting her neck muscles kinda where they needed to be. From there we went to rolling, she took a little time to roll, but now she will just about roll wherever she wants to go,” said Catelyn.

Her focus is working on Dottie’s strength, helping her roll over, clap, and inching closer to crawling and walking.

Dottie is one of Catelyn’s patients that she works with weekly, and she said, “So when they reach a milestone, I think they get excited but also I’m like ‘Oh my Goodness’ what we’ve been doing is working.”

UTM Infant Stim is about being there for the families in helping the child learn and function in their own environment.

“We go into the home and we work with families on what they want to work on. What’s important to them, so like today Dottie worked on physical things, but Cat could leave here today and work on speech, feeding, manipulation of toys, I mean the sky is the limit on things that we work on,” Lori Wilson, the program supervisor of Infant Stim, said.

The Tibbs family celebrates all victories for Dottie — big or small. She’s very fond of her dad, Clint. During the visit she shared many smiles and giggles with him.

“We do thank God that we’re still, we have her. We thank God every single day that we have this little girl. She’s doing amazing and we can feel everybody’s prayers that are praying for her,” said Clint.

Dottie’s family is thankful for Infant Stim and the work they invest into Dottie. This program keeps this family close to home and it keeps them physically closer together. It also helps Dottie healthy and growing as she should.

“They benefit families like us and other families, and it means the world to have the infant stim program through UTM and through them contracted through TEIS knowing that we have something like that here in our local community where we don’t have to travel somewhere say like Jackson or down to Memphis. We have that here and so with their donations it’s very helpful to keep that program going,” said Kassadie.

Often the comment “thankful” was made by the Tibbs family — that word is an understatement to them. Catelyn has become a part of the Tibbs family as she’s been working with Dottie celebrating so many milestones now and more to come.

Lori Wilson said the families these developmental therapists serve are so special to them. The treatment continues until the children are 5 years old, but they continue being a part of their patients lives, watching them graduate kindergarten, high school, and ultimately live their lives.

“Usually families don’t really know about us until you need us, we hear that a lot. It’s just one of those things that if you can impact a child’s life there’s a lot of meaning there. They’re going to grow up to be great individuals and it does take a community to make things work and function, yes absolutely, it will impact everybody sooner or later,” said Lori.



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Dottie and her sister Annsleigh.




The Tibbs also said Dottie’s sister Annsleigh has also made a big impact on Dottie’s success. It’s a family affair, and they expressed it takes a village to keep their world turning — again, expressing gratitude.



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Dottie and her sister Annsleigh.




The money UTM Infant Stimulation receives from the Telethon will go toward putting gas in their tanks as they travel to each appointment. Aside from paying for gas, the donations will also go toward different trainings for the group to advance their therapy techniques.

The Telethon is happening Saturday, December 7 from 6:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. on WPSD Local 6.

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