Lily Kay's Endo Appointment

Lily Kay had an Endocrinologist appointment on Thursday morning. She had blood drawn a few weeks ago to get ready for this appointment.

And did I mention the appointment was in The Morning? Like 8:45 A.M. Morning? And our Children's clinic is about 1.5 hours away? And Laoli is out of town (the nerve!), so all five of us got to go???

But we had fun...and they did great.

I'm breaking this post up into The Technical Stuff and The Other Fun Stuff:

First, The Technical Stuff:

Lily Kay's blood draw showed that her renin level is finally good (that salt campaign is working!) and her 17OHP level is good. Double yay! With her levels being "good", no medicine doseage changes are needed.

It was time for another Bone Age Study for LK. Thankfully, technically all this means is an x-ray of her wrist. But it shows the docs alot. It shows how her bones are maturing and at what rate. Her first study after coming home last year (when she had just turned 4, mind you) showed that her bone age was 7 years 10 months. Not good. When we tested a year later (this past March), it had increased to 8 years 10 months. Not good...but at least it hadn't increased MORE than a year in one year. We need this number to stall and let her chronological age catch up with it. Children with LK's adrenal issue are much taller than normal as children (yes, yes)...but then their growth plates close prematurely and they end up significantly shorter than average as adults.

But with all the levels good yesterday, Dr. G said that the bone age study should show LK's bone age number now stalling. And that is exactly what happened! I called and got the results yesterday morning and her bone age is still 8 years 10 months. It didn't even move one month in the past four months! Thank you, Lord!

We also found out during this appointment that we may be able to stop LK's quarterly shots that are keeping her precocious puberty at bay. Dr. G mentioned there is a subcutaneous implant (that would go in her arm) that we could use instead of the shots. Doesn't sound fun to me, but....BUT, it's only once a year. Jas and I are looking into it, to see if it's something we want to do for LK instead of the quarterly shots. Insurance sometimes doesn't want to pay though, according to Dr. G, because the implant is so expensive. But these shots are expensive - like 4 digits expensive! Praise You, Lord for our insurance!

I think that's all the Technical Stuff, now for The Other Fun Stuff!

How to get 5 people (4 of whom are 5,6,7 and 8 y.o.) out of the house at 7 a.m.???

We had their clothes laid out and ready to go in their rooms.

The children ate their eggs and drank milk standing at the kitchen counter...and we took bowls of dry cereal with us in the Silver Bullet.

It is apparent in this picture that they each brought "friends" also. Noah is holding the infamous Chippyye...and Daniel's sea turtle is swimming so fast it is a blur!

Behind Elisabeth's head you can see the curtain that can be drawn to give some privacy in the (very small) exam room. My kiddos hid behind this curtain to "surprise" Dr. G. Have I mentioned how much I love this Dr. G??? She totally played along, much to the children's delight. The rest of the time, the older three sat in the two (just two!) available chairs and were very quiet (hopefully Dr. G couldn't tell I had threatened them within an inch of their lives if they didn't be quiet and let me talk with and listen to her VERY good!)

This picture did not turn out good AT ALL (thanks to my handy dandy point-and-shoot)...but I'm including it anyway.

It shows the room we did LK's Bone Age study in....meaning her wrist x-ray. That is a video being projected onto the wall. The great staff at our wonderful children's clinic let us "play" for a few minutes. ("Go ahead! We don't have anyone else scheduled right now.") The children had 10 different videos/scenes to choose from...and the overhead light color in the room changed with the changing scenes. They LOVED this! Just one of the small things that make these appointments not terrible. It's not clear, but this particular scene made it appear that you were underwater...so my brilliant kids held their noses to hold their breath.

Another thing we did to make the appointment day more fun:

NO, I didn't put the rascals in a cage!

We went to lunch at our favorite restaurant - CFA! And played, of course.

They were so tuckered out from all the fun appointment stuff and playing at CFA that every single one of them fell asleep on the drive home.

Noah did not look comfortable AT ALL...
....but he later told me that Chippyye had cushioned his head.

E asked to borrow my glasses because it was "so bright". They apparently helped her fall asleep.

After Elisabeth woke up, she took these pictures of Daniel and LK, who were sitting in the row behind her and Noah:

You'll just have to take my word for it that that was LK under that blanket.

We had some exciting moments right before arriving at our children's clinic. I couldn't remember at first if we'd been there since we've had the Silver Bullet. The reason it matters is that the Silver Bullet doesn't just fit in any 'ole parking garage. We found that out the hard way when we showed up at our Children's Hospital for Noah's hernia repair surgery in April! The Silver Bullet wouldn't fit in the first two garages we tried! YIKES! But - whew! - the clearance was 8 ft. on this parking garage. No problem!

Seven short hours after we pulled out of the driveway, we pulled back in. A good time was had by all!