Orthopedic Appointment

NO FEVER! We have been fever free all morning, although I gave her some Tylenol anyways to keep it at bay. However, she did wake up with little red bumps all over her torso, chest, neck, and back. She even slept in her pajama gown so it's not like she was sweating last night. It got a little worse while we were at the orthopedic's office so I put a call into the peds, since they are right down the road, and asked if I could just bring her in but they said they only had a 1:30 appt. Unfortunatly both my cars aren't running so my mom gave us a ride to our appt this morning so I told them to forget about it and I'll just see the new ped tomorrow. UGH! Mina I wish you could be our doctor!

So the ortho was SO nice. He asked why we were there and I began telling him about her sacral dimple, DiGeorge Syndrome, and the MRI results. He looked at her and said, "Wow, I would have never thought she had DiGeorge Syndrome." He has 5 other patients under the age of 6 that have DiGeorge and he say by far Arianna was the best DiGeorge kid he knows. He said, "She must be slightly affected?", I told him yeah if you consider a heart defect being slightly affected. But we all know that with DiGeorge there are SO many anomalies that your child could have so I have to be thankful that Arianna is doing as well as she is. He commented on how amazed he was that she was already walking considering she had open-heart surgery and DiGeorge. He was glad we already had the MRI done, because he would have ordered one if we didn't already have one. He said even though the MRI looked good, surprisingly x-rays will give us a better look at her spine. So we did 2 x-rays of her spine. They got a really good view and I was able to see the butterfly vertebra perfectly. Basicaly like it sounds, her vertebra is underdeveloped and in the shape of a butterfly. He said he can seen this before and he alot of the time it doesn't get worse, however there is still the possiblity that is can. He then went on to tell me Arianna has scoliosis. I immediatly felt sad but I know alot of people can have scoliosis and never need intervention. You could clearly see the curve, even though it is only a 1 degree curve. I just feel like it's never going to end, it's been one thing after another with this girl. I asked him if she has all her vertebra and he started counting and realized she has an extra lumbar vertebra. I kind of got a laugh out of that....she either is missing something or has an extra....just how it seems to go with her. He said it won't cause any problems but she should not smoke because it would cause her back pain. I never heard that before, but I'll use that to make sure I scare the crap out of her so she doesn't smoke. I'm an ex-smoker myself and I can't believe I used to put that nasty crap in my body. Here you have a child that fights to live a healthy life and there I was putting toxins into my body, taking for granted my health. I sure have a better way at looking at things...thanks to Arianna! The ortho said he really can't tell me if this will get worse but he hopes it doesn't. He said the only intevention for this would be surgery, but since she is so young they wouldn't use rods but do a reconstruction. I don't even want to think about that. I am standing in the Word and believing that God will heal her from this scoliosis and she will not require surgery. We go back in 6 months to do another set of x-rays to make sure we don't let things get worse. Please believe with me that Arianna will be healed from this and we can add this to her list of miracles that God has done for her.

As for the rest of the day, we have our OT coming...actually she just called and is running late so I was able to jump on here and update. Arianna always gets so excited to see Janet. Well better go she is stumbling all over the living room and getting upset.