Winter Clinic 2012

Victoria's intermittent belly pain continues.  On Wednesday, it came and went a couple of times.  But stuck around all afternoon.  For three hours she just stayed on the sofa or bed acting pitiful.  The CF clinic wasn't concerned at all because she'd had a bowel movement.  But I decided to call the pediatrician again because this is so out of character.  I was explaining it to the nurse to see if there was something else we should try or watch for.  She asks if I can get there in the next 30 minutes before I finish going through the whole history.  So I bundle Victoria off to the pediatrician.  She's pitiful all the way to the peds.  She only perked up after filling out all the paperwork.  I was kind of hoping to show the doctor how pitiful she's been all afternoon!  A check with the doctor - she double checked that Victoria didn't have an appendix  to worry about.  And said that if she was having a recurrence of intussusception that it was early - so wait and see.   So I felt better but not completely convinced.

That night Hubby and I got food poisoning.  Victoria didn't eat the chicken so no food poisoning for her! Our doctor said we couldn't go to clinic on Thursday. It didn't take much to convince us to stay home once we had someone to take Victoria to clinic.  I begged my mother to change her plans to take care of us. She did.  She took me to the doctor and pharmacy.  She stepped in and took Victoria to clinic too. While she was there she called and read the forms for me to help her fill out all the paperwork.  Then at some point in the visit, she called again and said 'Wow, you see a lot of people'.  Yeah, there are a whole host of people we see - nurses, respiratory therapist, dietician, doctors - usually two because we attend a teaching hospital, even researchers, and sometimes a social worker.  Yup, we see a lot of people every clinic visit.  That's why doctor visits last 2 - 3 hours every quarter.

Victoria is doing well even though she lost a little weight (a few ounces) since November.  She's up to 105.8 cm and weighed in a 17.2 kg.  The doctor offered an appetite stimulant.  We've been down that road. As long as her weight says over 50% and she's not consistently losing then I think we'll skip the appetite stimulant.  And we'll likely try other things before we go for the stimulant again.

I knew the doctor was going to give orders for an OGTT (Oral Glucose Tolerance Test) we'd talked about it in November, but he didn't see a need to rush out and do it.  So that wasn't a surprise.  However the doctor then said we needed annual labs & x-rays.  We talked about that in November.  He said then that since she'd been in the hospital over the summer that all those labs and x-rays would count for this year's annual labs.   I wonder if something has changed and he didn't explain it or if he just changed his mind.  Who knows?   However, I really liked having annual labs at the Fall clinic around her birthday.  Hopefully changing it back in 9 months won't be a problem.  So once I fully recover from the food poisoning, we'll be off to visit the vampires.  We'll make a day of it with OGTT, labs, and an x-ray.

Oral Glucose Tolerance Test will be an annual lab starting when she's 10.   That's the current guideline for cystic fibrosis patients, at least at our clinic.  But because she had one abnormal glucose screen in the hospital they want to do a test to follow up.  Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes (CFRD) is a real possibility.  Many (around 35%) eventually develop it.

We're staying doubled up on the miralax until her belly pain is completely resolved.  Today she only had a couple of short lived bouts of belly pain.  The doctors examined her said she had good bowel sounds and they didn't feel anything abnormal so they're not worried.  I try not worry.

That's more than enough for now.