Monday, March 9, 2015

Doctor's Appointments

The boys have had a couple of doctor's appointments lately. I try and get all our yearly check ups, dentist appointments, etc done with sometime early in the year so we don't have worry about it over the summer or near the holidays.

Carter had his annual follow up with his allergist a couple of weeks ago. My mom stayed with Evan, which made it so much easier on me. I knew that they'd probably have to do some allergy testing, so I let him pack a bag of toys and things to do, in case it took awhile.

He brought tools and decided the chairs in the waiting room needed fixing.

He looked like such a big boy to me getting his blood pressure taken.

Carter was so great during the appointment. I had some questions about our upcoming flight since it'll be his first time on an airplane and he's highly allergic to peanuts. His allergist told me all the things that I had already thought I should do, which made me feel good. I really like her and I'm glad that we found an allergist here that I feel comfortable with. He did have to have some blood work taken and he was really good. He normally doesn't cry at all, but now he's at an age where he knows it's supposed to be scary, but he was so good and still. It broke my heart, so I basically promised him the world beforehand. The nurse gave him two stickers and he immediately put one in his bag to give to Evan. On the way home, we went through a drive through to get ice cream and he only wanted it if he could get one for Evan, too--which I thought was the sweetest thing ever!!

We got the blood test results back the other day and he is still highly allergic to peanut. A couple of other things have changed and he now needs to avoid tree nuts and shellfish. Cat and Dog were pretty high. Although we were told when he was first diagnosed that he would never out grow his peanut allergy, it was still in the back of my mind that maybe he would, so I was pretty disappointed to hear that his numbers were still extremely high. I was very surprised to hear about the other changes and still haven't discussed them much with the doctor because it caught me so off guard when she called. It's not the end of the world, but obviously it breaks my heart for him to have to deal with food allergies and even more so, now that there's more that he's going to have to avoid.
 
 

A couple days later, I took Evan to the doctor while my dad kept Carter. Evan sits in a W, like he is below, and when the occupational therapist came to their school to evaluate the kids, they put on his paper that it's something we need to get him to stop doing and could be a sign of low muscle tone. I wasn't too worried about it because we weren't worried about his muscle tone at all. We forgot about it, but then it came up again during parent teacher conferences that he won't sit "crisscross applesauce" (we called it Indian Style when I was a kid) and that he said it hurt his legs. So, I tried at home to get him to sit crisscross and he started crying saying that it hurt. I looked it up and all the things that it would be associated with weren't things that we were worried about with Evan, but when trying to work on his sitting led to him crying, I felt like I should get it checked out. We went to his pediatrician, who had the same thoughts that I did, that if you look at the symptoms on paper, they're concerning, but when looking at that in the context of what we know about Evan, we probably didn't have anything to worry about. But, he felt that what he saw during the exam should be checked out by a specialist, just to make sure. So, we set up an appointment and went.


Evan was really good. He's definitely the least patient of the two, but he was taken back on time and the nurse and doctors were not running behind at all. I brought some crayons and a coloring book and he was happy the whole time.

Two doctors checked him out and it turns out that he has femoral anteversion. It's no big deal at all, about 10% of kids have it. It's the main cause of kids walking on their toes. They used to put kids in leg braces for it, but found out that the leg braces did absolutely nothing. It either gets better or it doesn't--there's nothing you can do for it--braces, physical therapy, etc. will not help it. And it almost always gets better. Only 1% of kids need surgery for it, and that's the extreme cases, where it's affecting their walking.
 
 
I'm so glad we took him in and found out. It's absolutely nothing and we are not worried in the least about him needing surgery, we know he won't. The doctor did say that it is very likely that it does hurt to sit crisscross applesauce and to not make him do it, but his teacher doesn't make him, so it's not even an issue. During our parent teacher conference, she told me that she lets him sit with his legs straight forward and it's not an issue.

The boys have their teeth cleaning appointments coming up in a couple weeks and then they're done until their 5 year check ups!


 

 

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