Coburn Kids

All right, 18 month appointment today was… ahem… eventful.  No shots!  But he still got poked. Let’s just start from the top and head south.

Head – Gray hair.  What’s that you say?  Yes, gray hair.  Caden has so little hair anyways it’s really hard to tell a color. This morning Adessa commented on how Caden’s hair is gray.  I, the ever polite and educational mommy told her, “no honey, that’s blonde hair”.  Didn’t think anything of it.  Go to the Pediatrician and hear the Dr. say, “he has gray hair!”.  What the…. I don’t even know what that means but I’m sticking with ash blonde and no one can convince me otherwise.

Skin – Eczema.  It’s bad, we are going to start him on Zyrtec for the itching.  This is where the poke above comes in.  Doctor drew blood for an allergy test. As a fact for you, preemies are hard to get blood from.  Apparently there’s a lot of scarring on the veins and it makes them thick but Dr. Lantz is a pro.

Mouth – Swallow study. Got our referral from our Dr. to get this done. Caden also hasn’t gained any weight in like… 4 months, still 22 lbs.  But he moves around a lot more now.  I’m sticking to that story as well.

Heart – Murmur. This could just be the small L>R shunt he has since we haven’t heard it in a while, no idea.  Cardiologist appointment moved from 3 year old to 2 year’s old.

Thumbs – X-rays. Got a referral to get some x-rays to check out Caden’s lil’ thumbs.  See what’s going on there with the deformed one.  Check bone structure, etc.

Whole Body- Geniticist. We got a referral to get Caden checked out by a geneticist for all his little oddities. They call them congenital malformations… oddities is better. 

M-Chat Test – Bogus. It’s a bunch of yes/no questions.  It’s to test for Autism and it’s pretty new but gaining widespread use in pediatrician’s offices.  I never had to fill one out for Gena and Adessa.   Nurse was very concerned about Caden and his… I don’t know, failure at the test?  Though it’s not really a pass or fail test.  I just smiled at the nurse.  When his doctor came in we both kind of chuckled.  I should note that the test itself is not bogus by the way, only in Caden’s case. It’s not really a test Caden can do right now or something I would expect him to do.  Questions range from “Does your child walk?” to “Does your child ever pretend, for example, to talk on the phone or take care of a doll or pretend other things?” You can see all the questions for the M-Chat here if you are curious.  How to score results are here. They use it to test children at their 18 month visit and their 2 year old visit now. Caden is behind but has great people skills, great eye contact, great interactive skills.  So we’ll look again at 2 years old but his Dr. and I are keeping an open mind with even that depending on what the next 6 months will hold.

Follow-up – In 3 months. Dr. decided that with all the tests and Caden being Caden we should do a 21 month appointment instead of waiting until 2 years old.  I agreed.

So this week will be filled with the job I know so well… appointment setter!  We got our tax return back, having such huge medical deductions results in a nice one by the way.  So we’ll use that money and invest it right back into, you guessed it, medical! I’ll keep ya’ll updated.