Appt update!

Well...there really isn't much to report. His xrays and his ROM were worse, but the dr said he expected it to be. He watched him walk, tried to get him to run (but Dalton would not...), had him stand on one leg and then on the other, etc. He asked me several questions about if he kept up with other children. I told him he didn't keep up in running and climbing, but he doesn't let it stop him...he still plays. There is just a tiny bit of flattening or something now on his left hip and he said that he *thinks* right now that maybe Dalton is overcompensating with the left leg..but then he asked me if I knew that having it in one leg gave him a little higher of a risk of having it in the other...which I knew. He said to give him both tylenol and motrin at bedtime. I just hate to have to give him medication every day. I did give him motrin tonight at bedtime because he seemed to be more sore today. I will give him tylenol if he were to wake up tonight. I told him that we had an appointment at Shriners..he said we would love it and that if this was his child that is where he would take them..bc he wouldn't treat his own child. I went ahead and scheduled the follow up w/Dr. Beckish just in case Shriners doesn't work out for some reason.

Here's the latest xray pics (lol..I figured I would try to cover him up just a tad.)


You can see on this part on the left side of the "rounded" part that it is just a tad flat. Any of my perthes girls want to comment on this for me???

Oh and here's a cute picture of Dalton and Katie looking out the window last week at our non-stop rain! lol

Pain and appointment confirmation

Appointment with Shriners is 4/23 at 1:00pm with Dr. Gibson.

We will be keeping our appointment with Dr. Beckish this coming Monday, 3/30 at 9:10am. We just felt like the end of April was too long to wait until he was seen, especially since we know that his ROM has worsened.

Last night was hands down the worst night we've had with pain. He got up 4 times crying with pain and basically the rest of the night he tossed and turned and moaned and would reach for his leg. It was rough...we didn't get much sleep. This morning he's stiff, but that's not unusual for mornings on a good day.

I always get so anxious around appointment times just not knowing if this is the time that they will say that he needs some kind of surgery or braces or something. It could never happen, but there's always the chance that it will. I know we'll be fine regardless..it's just that fear of the unknown that stinks.

I will update after his appointment on Monday.

Prayers have been answered!!

WE HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED AT SHRINERS!!!!!!!!! Yes, you heard me right! Just found out this morning that he's been accepted....I have absolutely cried my eyes out from just sheer happiness! This is going to be such a blessing for us! You wouldn't believe, even with GOOD insurance, how much we've had to pay out of pocket for xrays and so forth! The lady that I spoke with this morning told me that I should know within the week when his first appointment would be.

As far as Dalton goes, he has good days and bad days. He may do relatively find during the day but cry with leg pain at night, or he may have some episodes of pain during the day and sleep fine at night. The limp is always there now. In the beginning he might limp some and not some but now he limps always. Sometimes it's worse than others, but definetly always there.

Yesterday we were at my mom's and he went to get on his Radio Flyer tricycle (and I specify the kind so you would know it's higher than a hot wheels or something) and he had his left foot on the pedal but was struggling to get his right leg up and on and he screamed out about his "stupid, stupid weg!" and just cried. Me and Mama had tears in our eyes and Mama said "bless his little heart". He's never had trouble like that before. He just let his right leg hang out and he pedaled with just his left one. :( My poor baby. He gets so frustrated with it sometimes and he will say that he wishes Ju Ju's weg hurt for him. (Ju Ju (Julie) is my sister and she told him one time that she wished it was her leg and not his...) This is a definite issue with his ROM (range of motion). It is definetly, definetly worse.....

Along with new doctors comes that fear of not knowing what they will do for him...they could do this wait and watch approach, or they could be more aggressive with it. Guess we'll just pray that whatever is needed is the best thing for Dalton now and for the long term!

Hopeful of getting into Shriners!

I don't have time to go into the details at the moment (both of the boys are sick and I am exhausted!), but we filled out an application for Shriner's and Dalton's case was going to be presented this evening. If approved then it will go to the next stage and I believe they will bring him in to evaluate him and then a team of dr's will review his case to see if they can help him. We were told that the only way he wouldn't be accepted were to be if they didn't think they could help him. So we are hopeful that he'll get in.

Please pray that this will be an answer to our prayers.

Pain

Gah...so I posted last on the 19th that he'd been limping and stiff for about a week...well he's still doing it. There's been no let up in the limping or the stiffness. And out of the past 5 nights he's gotten up twice a night on 3 of the nights. He will just cry and roll around and moan and sit up and lay down and scream out and want me to hold him and then scream when I try to move him. It's very frustrating and it's so hard as a mom to NOT be able to make it better or to be able to tell him that it "won't hurt tomorrow!" His ROM (range of motion) still stinks. If anything, I think it's worse...we do the exercises but I can't really tell that it's helping. It's like we are just stuck. He's limping bad at times and should be couched I guess..but then if we limit his activity then it makes the stiffness worse. So I just don't know what to do really. It makes it hard for me to let go because he is afraid of his leg cramping and hurting and not having somebody with him that can help him. He will cry and say he doesn't want to go to Awana and I know it's his leg because he LOVES Cubbies! I just feel torn because I can't be everywhere and do everything so we just end up sitting at home...and that's hard too because we are home ALL.THE.TIME.

Don't get me wrong...I hate to sound all doom and gloom. Life is grand in the grand scheme of things. School is going well for Hunter and I am working with Dalton on Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and he's doing SO good and he's so proud of himself that he's starting to sound out letter blends. We do lots of fun things with school and we do have some play dates. Both of the boys got into poison oak back in January...then Hunter got into it AGAIN in a different spot (in the woods behind our house) and I had to call the on call pediatrican for our pediatric group this evening and she called him in another round of prednisone because instead of completely going away it just flared up again this weekend. Hunter had a sinus infection at the beginning of the month and then Joey got sick with a cold/sinus infection and we all followed and Hunter got it again as well and he didn't seem to be able to shake it so finally the pediatrician put him on an antibiotic this past Friday. So now he's on both the Omnicef and the prednisone. We are steering clear of sickness as much as possible. It's just too hard. I feel like between the poison oak and the sinus infection(s) that one of us has had something since the beginning of January! I'm hoping if we can just hang on another week or two that the sickness will all go away and we can be back to some kind of a normal routine!

That's about it for our update. Poison oak, sinus infections, and leg pain...we are a wild crowd! ha We are really hoping to see a little snow tomorrow and then we are ready for Spring to get here soon!! :)