Appointment Day

We had a full, good day today.  The five kiddos and I pulled out in the Silver Bullet at 7:30 this morning to head to Lily Kay's endocrinologist appointment in our neighboring state to the south.  LK is still seeing Dr. G every four months to keep tabs on her adrenal issue, so we already had this appointment scheduled, but with the recent scare we had this was good timing.

The first order of business after arriving at the clinic was to head to the 2nd floor for LK to have an X-ray to do a follow-up "bone age" study.

Then the six of us took a little detour to the fourth floor to see our favorite doctor ever, Dr. M, who has performed surgeries (minor and major) on all my children except Elisabeth.  (I never mentioned Mr. G's circ?  Well, there you go.)  We delivered some yummy brownies (that deserve their own post) to her and her awesome staff and visited for a few minutes.

THEN, we headed up two more floors to the sixth floor for the endo appointment.

Dr. G reviewed the X-ray and the bone age study showed that LK is still at 8 years 10 months.  Through LK's medicines this number has been "frozen" there for the last year and a half...and Dr. G says this is "great!"  We want her chronological age (6y5m) to be able to catch up, so this is good news.  (When we first started following this when LK arrived home, she had just turned four and her bong age was 7y10m.)

The implant that LK received last December is FDA-approved for one year, so it is time to start working on the process to get the next one approved (by insurance) and scheduled.  IF we're planning to do an implant in December, that is.  Dr. G is leaving it up to us to either go ahead with the implant...or try to see if the implant will last longer, with the understanding that I'd need to watch for symptoms that would indicate the implant is losing its effectiveness.  Considering I'm the one who spotted the symptoms in the first place two years ago, I'm o.k. with that.  Mostly.  So we have a decision to make there...

One of LK's numbers was way high this time.  Like, it multiplied over 6 times since her last blood draw several months ago.  Not good.  The doctor was very concerned.  We've had to switch labs (stupid insurance thing...don't get me started) and this one doesn't open until 8:30 a.m....two hours later than when we used to have her blood drawn.  We have to delay LK's morning meds until after her draw in order to get an accurate number...but the delay in the meds (which should be taken at 7 a.m.) could be contributing to this increase.  Contributing...but it shouldn't explain such a huge increase.  And then it occurred to me:  that blood was drawn 2.5 weeks ago on a Friday.  And that morning when we had blood drawn LK seemed totally fine...but by that evening she was running a fever.  And the next day?  Well, it was bad.  Very bad.  So I asked Dr. G if that sickness coming on could make her numbers increase like that.  It is very possible that is the cause.  I'm taking LK to get blood drawn again in a couple days to follow-up and just make sure everything looks good and that level is back to normal.

And we now have a new vial of emergency meds (emergency shot) to carry around in my purse, where ever we go.  I carried that last one around for over two years, until we had to use it on that Saturday night a couple weeks ago...I pray that we never have to use this one.