WELL CHECK UP

On Wednesday ( August 24th ) Alma had is well child check up. We talked to Dr. Dimick about changing Alma to a dairy free diet. We were curious if he needs to take any extra supplements. Dimick said that until adolescents you don't have to worry about calcium. We also talked about having an allergy test done to see if Alma needs an epi pen. The last thing we talked about was Alma's heart murmur. Dimick listened to his heart and said it still sounds the same, like a garden hose with a small nozzle on it. I was just curious how it was sounding. Dimick must have thought we wanted to do more. He wrote a prescription to see a cardiologist. He said just in case we want to. I thought it was in our hands to take further action. Shortly after we got home Primary Childrens called to schedule an appointment. I didn't want to be a bad mom and say, " No, We don't want to." So I set the appointment and had Jere check to make sure that the doctor is covered, he is:)

Krys went with us to the appointment and then to the new DI. As we were at the DI  I asked Krys what she thought we should do about Alma's heart. She said she wouldn't mess with the heart, it is worth it to get piece of mind. I asked Alma if he wants to get his heart checked and he said yes. So we were planning on scheduling with a cardiologist just not that soon. After the appointment was scheduled I was like well I guess we deal with the heart before the allergies. His appointment is September 6th.

Krys thought Dr. Dimick was cute. He was looking really good. Everyone who see Dimick "likes" him. Krys liked him so much she said he was going to be her pediatrician.

THE NUMBERS: I always thought Alma's growth spurts were in March or April, after his well child check up.  Because this one was on his half birthday we could chart his last growth spurt. He was 54% for his height and 21% for his weight. These numbers put together make his BMI in the 5%.  Dimick said you are the skinniest you will ever be between age 3 and 10. Alma is still on a nice growth curve. I was looking at the numbers from all the other well child check ups and noticed that Alma is getting taller faster than he is gaining weight. 
  His percentiles        Height:  age 4 14%                      Weight: age 4 24%
                                             age 5 32%                                   age 5 17%
                                             age 6  37%                                  age 6  18%
                                             age 7.5  54%                               age 7.5 21%

I guess he is playing catch up on his height. When he was born he was 95%


OFF TOPIC: Our old printed was having issues and wasn't working with Windows 7 so we had to get a new one. Kodak was doing $50 off a new printer if you recycled and old printer through Best Buy. We had our old  little Kodak printer that has been sitting in the garage over a year  that we took in. We wanted to sell it but knew we couldn't get much for it and no one wanted to buy it. There is no way we could've sold it for $50! We walked out of Best Buy with a nice new Kodak mega printer, ok not mega but a nice one. It prints, copies, and scans. My favorite part is that it can print nice pictures. I have missed printing my pictures at home.

THE FORT IS COMPLETE

It has been almost two months since we got Alma's fort and today we finally finished it. A week after getting it we had it set up and Alma could play on it. Last week Jere power washed to strip all the old stain and paint that the previous kids put on it. This week we stained/ painted it.

This shows the new tire swing Jere made today

HEALTHY AS AN OX

Monday (8-15-11) I got the lab results of my blood draw from the week before. They checked everything.  Kidney and liver function, blood sugar, thyroid, vitamin D,cholesterol,blood count and much more. Those are just the ones that Dr. Lym pointed out in his notes. There is also a line that says calcium, I assume that is the same thing I take my calcium chews for. ALL of my numbers are in the normal range, not one thing is too high or too low. 

I have been having fun with my results. I keep eating yummy things in front of Jere and saying" My triglycerides are normal so I can eat ANYTHING I want"  I keep eating what I normally eat, I must eat pretty healthy if all my levels are good. Getting all the good stuff ( vitamin D and Calcium) and not too much of the bad (cholesterol). It is nice to know that I'm perfectly healthy. Alot of things are both genetic and life style based. It looks like I have good genes and a pretty healthy life style.

Perfectly Anxious

I haven't been feeling that great lately so today I went to see Dr. Lym. I've had shortness of breath, chest pains, what I call the eternal side ache and other pains. He determined that it is anxiety. The shortness of breath is caused by anxiety. The chest pain and side ache are most likely acid reflux and anxiety can cause you to produce more acid. So he gave me some samples of a new drug for acid reflux, Dexilant. If that doesn't help in a couple of weeks I'm suppose to go back and then we will do some test to see what is causing the pain. I think it will help now that we know Jere isn't having heart surgery and I thought it might be acid reflux.

While there I also had them check my cholesterol. Since Jere got his I've been curious of what mine is. The nurse came in to take my blood. She had three tubes. I asked if they were all for cholesterol and she said no, Dr. Lym is doing a health panel on you. They check cholesterol, for diabetes, kidney and liver function, blood count and more. I should have the result by the end of next week. Dr. Lym will get the lab reports back and then write a letter and mail it to me. It will be good to see what those tests show.

A Great Weekend

This weekend has been good.

Thursday we got a check in the mail from doctors appointments that we had in March. We all got our eyes checked in March. I thought it should be concidered preventive care. They charged us our co-pay and we left it at that. I guess it was preventive because the check was the amount of all three of our co-pays.

Friday we met with the surgeon ( Dr. Kenwood) to discuss if Jere needs surgery or not. After talking about the pros and cons there will be no surgery right now. Instead Jere will just be monitored ( echo with bubbles) yearly and take a baby asprin daily. Jere fell asleep during the TEE and so he didn't realize that they did a bubble test. They mix air into salt water and then inject it into your IV. There should be bubbles in the right side of your heart but not the left because the lungs should filter the bubbles out. If they is any bubbles in the left side of the heart that means that blood went through the hole and bypassed the lungs. Jere had " a moderate" amount of bubles in the left side.  Dr. Kenwood was shocked to find out Jere ran cross country in high school. Dr. Kenwood said if I felt strongly about closing it I wouldnt give you a choice. At this point and with our insurance we are looking for a reason to close it ( and there isn't really one). There are lots of hoops we would have to go through. Jere would have to get a brain MRI with bubbles, to see if bubbles( clots) are getting to his brain. Dr. Sampson was going to have a fellow stroke specialist look at Jere's stuff and she what they thought.

Friday night we went to the drive-ins. We saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes and X-Men First Class. Both movies were so good. Alma is the one who actully chose which movies to see. You know your kid is growing up fast when they chose "grown-up" movies.

Saturday we slept in until 9am, it felt so good. Jere got up and took Alma to Home Depot for their monthly craft. When they got home we where going to go to the dumps and drop off some old computer parts and see if they had any outdoors paint or stain for the shed Jere built and Alma's fort. On our way to the dumps Jere wanted to drop the monitor off at the DI  because it still worked. Since we were there we went inside to look around. We found some books, a game, a cool fleece soccer blanket, a Willow Tree figure, a Backugan toy and an office style white board cabinet. It is 4 feet by 4 feet cherry wood. You open it up and both doors have cork board on them, the center is a huge white board and there is a projector screen that pulls down . It also had markers ( that all worked) , an eraser and push pins. We tried to get it into our car but it wouldn't fit so we had to call Ellen and Naamah to bring the truck. As a thank you we took them out to eat at Carl's Jr.

At the dumps we scored a green paint for the shed and a red stain for Alma's fort.

It was a great weekend.