This week is Fall Break, which means I tried to schedule the kids for various doctor's appointments. Usually, this isn't too big of a deal, but Mia has been weird recently, and we're not sure what's going on.
First, today I took her to the dentist. One of her permanent teeth is coming in, but the baby tooth hasn't come out yet. Krys was a bit nervous about that, because the adult tooth was coming in over the baby tooth, so we figured we'd get it looked at. The dentist said that's common, so we shouldn't worry about it. We're used to Norah's teeth, which fall out with stunning regularity (she has huge gaps in her mouth right now). So one crisis averted.
The more serious stuff, however, is very vexing. Ever since early July, when she started throwing up a lot, we've been dealing with it. Then it was because she was constipated (we think), but recently, she's been throwing up for seemingly no good reason. She's been pooping fine, she doesn't have any other symptoms of illness, and we're not feeding her any more than we ever have. It's very frustrating, because we can't get her weight up if she's vomiting 4-5 times a week. Tomorrow we're taking her to the gastroenterologist to get her checked out, but who knows if that will help. On Wednesday we're taking her to the neurosurgeon because we want to eliminate "shunt malfunction" as a reason. Her neurosurgeon told us years ago that her shunt was no longer needed and it wasn't working at all, but he didn't want to take it out because it's surgery on the head and it was fine where it was. Shunt malfunction can lead to vomiting and other symptoms, and while we don't think it's anything to do with that, we're still going to eliminate it. So she's getting an MRI and some shunt studies this week as well.
Meanwhile, her seizures have been getting worse. In the past two weeks she's had a few really bad (and long) ones, worse than we've ever seen before. They're actually quite scary. We also think she's having some when she's sleeping (she's not very loud during them, so we can't hear her), which wakes her up, which means she's tired during the day. So she's going to school, falling asleep, and/or vomiting. The past two weeks at school haven't been very good, in other words. She has an appointment with the neurologist in early November, so we're hoping that we can figure the seizures out. The reason I'm not sure if the gastroenterologist will be able to help is because I think the vomiting is definitely linked to the seizures, and she (the gastroenterologist) won't be able to help us there. But we're still taking her!
I'm not sure if any of this has to do with puberty. Mia has shown some signs of beginning puberty, and we know that once the hormones start going nuts in her, she might have a whole new host of problems to worry about. Is this the beginning of that? We'll have to see - I'm going to bring it up to the doctors, and maybe they can figure it out. I have a feeling, though, that I'm going to be mad at a lot of doctors soon, because I have a feeling they're not going to be able to help too much. We shall see.
It's extremely frustrating. It's hard to get her in her leg splint and help stretch her leg when she's feeling so crappy and throwing up so much. Plus, I'm scared to feed her and give her medicine, because who knows when she's going to puke? I brought her home from school last Thursday and kept her home on Friday (it was a half-day, so I figured it wouldn't matter too much), and just sleeping seemed to help her a lot. That's great for this week, when she doesn't have to get up, but she needs to wake up at 6.30 in the morning to get to school. If she's too sleepy, I think she's more susceptible to vomiting. So yeah, it sucks.
Maybe we can figure something out this week, or at least in November when we visit the neurologist. That would be swell.
