The Macmurphys: Brain Overload

This past week and a half has been full of doctors appointments for Kaylie all of which were specialists. The great thing about specialists is you are paying them more to see your child in turn they give you the time you need to answer all your questions. When you leave you as if you are so much more informed and some what comforted by what they have to say. Sometimes I hear so much new info. I am shocked that I can remember it all.

Here is a quick (as quick as I can make it) recap of her appointments:

GI doctor
He was excited to see her weight. He said before he felt she absolutely needed the G-button. Now he said he is on the fence but is ok waiting to see what she might do. She has already lost 6 oz. in the past 2 weeks but is still up enough to wait. We are hoping that during the summer she will be healthy and grow.

Immunologist
Dallas is blessed with a hospital that specializes in pediatrics. Even though we already have an immunologist (ours sees children and adults) we were encouraged by her pulmonologist to try a new one that deals with only children. He felt that the new one would give us a more specialized approach to dealing with her low immunity. Since I love him we switched. My only complaint was that the appt. was from 10:30-2:00. The good thing was that I learned so much more from her than I did from the other doctor we had been seeing.

Up until now I did not understand why a preemie is more susceptible to low immunity. She explained that a baby does not get the mother's immunity until 35 wks. in utero so unlike a term baby that has some help at birth a preemie has to do it by themselves from the get go. It is not until a few months later (I think she said 8 months) that a term baby begins to drop the mother's immunity and us there own. By then they have hopefully built up their own. In Kaylie's case she is laking in some. Now that we know that we can try to help her out.

This doctor was incredibly optimistic. She said every one's immunity is constantly changing. Because of that Kaylie will require regular monitoring until hopefully around the age of 10ish. That is so much better than what the other doctor told us.

As of now...The doctor is checking her blood to see if she is responding to the vaccines she has been getting up until now. She explained the reason children have to get a vaccine 4 different times before the body realizes it is important. Unfortunately Kaylie has not responded to the Previnar vaccine (deals with respiratory stuff) and possibly the HIB vaccine. We will now that for sure after we get her blood work back. Once we find out about HIB we will go in and get boosters. That means we will get and extra previnar shot and HIB shot at her 2 year appt. A month from that day we will get more blood work done to see if her body has responded to the additional "boost." Most likely her body will not so than we do it again. We will continue this process as long as we need to make her body recognize the importance of having this vaccine in her body. If nothing changes in a few years she will be diagnosed as being IGA deficient. Until then she is just IGA low.

Her final words to me was that she felt like she would over come this. Woo Hoo!!!

ENT
Today we saw her ENT for follow up on her ear tubes. When she was born she did not turn to sound. It took me complaining about it for a good 8 months for anyone to do anything about it. With that and her chronic ear infections we were sent to an ENT. He confirmed that she had fluid behind her ears and could only hear things at times. At 10 months she got tubes. Since this is incredibly early for a child to get them and she was so little at that time he told us she would most likely need them again. Thankfully, they have stayed in up to this point and we have only had 3 ear infections in over a year that have pretty much taken care of themselves.

My main concern for today's appointment was to talk to him about her adenoids. I have had some concerns about her chronic sinus issues, respiratory issues, and runny nose. After the pulmonologist brought it up I felt better about talking to the ENT about it. I brought it up and he didn't even hesitate. He agrees 100% because the adenoids are a breeding ground for infection. He told me Kaylie has many of the reasons that they would take them out and she is a good age for t. Their are so many pluses and very few minuses to having them out. Even though he doesn't think it will fix every thing he feels it will help. The procedure will be a day surgery and the recovery should not bee too bad. He said he will go ahead and replace her tubes now instead of waiting to see when they will fall out so that we do not end up having to come back a few months later because they fell out. We will probablydo all of this in a few weeks.

Kaylie has been in love with all of her baby dolls and now her doggy. She has to sleep with 2 babies and her dog. To leave she has to have at least on baby. It makes me happy to see her attach to something. During her appts. she will hold onto them for comfort. It makes my heart melt.

She has finally figured out how to work the bubble dog. After her 4 hr. appt. we were both exhausted so we decided to sit on the porch to play. I watched as she sat in her own chair with the bubble dog shooting out bubbles, laughing as Bailey tried to get the bubbles. My little girl is growing up way too fast!