12 Month Checkup - Ouch!

Our most difficult recent news happened with Madeleine's one year checkup. I knew that she was small. We have always been ultra concerned about getting her as much food as possible, but her biological family is petite, so I wasn't super concerned. Well at her checkup the doctor was concerned, and wanted to run some blood tests, "just to make sure". I had to run down Madeleine's eating schedule to make sure she was getting an adequate intake - that was fine and if not above average.

Drawing blood on my baby was the worst thing EVER! I am big on vaccinations, my wonderful aunt contracted polio as a child and while I know there is valid concerns on all the spectrums in regards to autism, I am still very pro vaccinations. So when Madeleine has these shots, I know they bother her, but I feel very strongly that she has them so it makes it a little less difficult, I usually sing to her while she is getting vaccinated and usually she will only cry for less than a minute and is then fine for the rest of the day. Drawing blood was a whole 'nother story! It took two nurses and me to hold her down to insert the needle, and even though she has good veins, her still squirming would cause her vein to collapse, making it necessary to move to the other arm there in term the same sequence would follow with the vein collapsing again - I told them I didn't care what it took, I was NOT coming back to do this again so they better get whatever blood they needed TODAY! Over thirty minutes later with my poor baby screaming uncontrollably the entire time it was finished (and so was I!). I was so exhausted by trying to hold it together while the whole ordeal was being done that as soon as I came in the house I collapsed and cried and cried.


The next day I received a call from the doctor with the news, her blood was extremely acidic and her levels were off directing a kidney problem, most likely Renal Tubular Acidosis, where her body is unable to maintain Ph balance, causing all her intake be burned trying. This has resulted in her falling off the growth curve for her weight (she was only 17 lbs 1 oz). We were then instructed to schedule a visit with the nephrologist at Emory to have them review the results.



Yesterday was our visit with the specialist. I was so thankful that Andrew was also able to be there because I had no idea what the day would have in store for us. We had to first have her put a bag on to collect urine and then we were told to go next door to Egelston to have fresh labs drawn. Yuck, that meant more blood to be drawn. All in all it was so much easier, the nurse did a better job hitting the vein and I think Andrew's presence also calmed her, she still cried but it was NOTHING like last time. We finished up at the lab and went back to the doctor's office to await our results. Fortunately the doctor came back with some excellent news - she was completely normal. Having immediate labs drawn minimizes any skew to the test data and results are more accurate. The doctor figured that by being sent out to a lab caused the Ph in the blood to change by timing and other boring factors - we were just happy to hear we would not be frequenting the nephrologist.



To celebrate a clean bill of health, we took Madeleine to Chuck E. Cheeses for dinner. We had not been since we were both children - it was so much fun! Madeleine loved going on the little rides and we had fun being big kids playing skee-ball and shooting baskets. We even got our family sketch done!




Thanks for all the well wishes and prayers on our behalf during this difficult month in limbo - we are very thankful that all is well.