Wisdom Teeth & Growth Hormone

Hi all -

Well the little chipmunk has survived the wisdom teeth surgery as did her parents. Although - barely! Just kidding. She did great. Round the clock ice and pain pills for about 48 hours but she's feeling better and more like a human again as of yesterday - 2 days out. Still resembles a chipmunk somewhat though and can't eat anything that isn't mushy yet, but she's getting there. Lots of salt water rinsing, etc going on. All is well and we're on our to passing this mini milestone of life now for her.

Stephen hit a milestone of his own on Tuesday night in the midst of the wisdom teeth recovery. He received his first injection of growth hormone! YAY!! He did VERY well and remarked "That's it?" after the first injection. Whew!! It's a tiny little needle like insulin needles and is given in the fat and not in the muscles. We have to rotate the injection each day to one of 8 different spots on his body. Some he can reach and will eventually be able to do himself, the others are probably more difficult for him to do and will need one of us to help with.

Just a refresher but we've been moving down this path for the last couple of years as his growth has slowed and slowed and slowed, becoming almost non existent. Just for the record, he is 13 years old, 4 foot 8 inches and 79 pounds currently. He's been about that same height/weight for the last maybe 3 years, growing no more than about 3.3 cm/year at this point. Blood work was done and his IGF-1 factor is 120 and a boy in puberty should be around 600. Other tests were involved like bone age scans and growth hormone stimulation testing, all of which shows he's very delayed. The reason... probably a combination of the side effects from the medication he takes plus just a general low production of growth hormone which could be genetic.

We are now trying to get the insurance company to pay for the treatment which, at his current dosage, will cost somewhere in the $50,000 range per year. Likely, that number will be more like $75K or $100K as the dosages are increased for him. Yes... it's a ridiculously expensive medication. If insurance ultimately denies all the appeals, we will have to make some pretty significant life changes to ensure he gets the treatment he needs as this is something effecting his entire life at this point AND we have a short window while he is still in puberty.

Prayers would be especially helpful for all of us... Stephen... the rest of us..... and prayers for the insurance company to do the right thing.

Everyone have a great day! We're off yet to another doctor this morning - Dr. O'Neill - for Rachel's shoulders. One of them is still giving her some problems.

MA

June 14 - Time to Get Back at It!

I had the pleasure of spending another June weekend with some great ladies at a Scrapbooking Retreat. Marybeth, Laurie, Dallas, Beth, Jana, Bridget. All wonderful ladies. We had a great time being creative, eating well, drinking wine and laughing a lot.

Again this year, I felt like I took my entire scrapbook room of stuff with me and I actually didn't take it all this time! Unfortunately, after I carried all that stuff from the car to the house, I did not have any creative motivation hit me this weekend. My brain has been working overtime on various stresses in my life and just kept distracting my brain during this weekend. It's tiring! I'm trying to work through a variety of stressful situations in my life - mostly work related and family medical related. Just couldn't settle my brain enough to organize pictures and make great (or even half way decent) scrapbook pages. So.. I accomplished one page. :-) YEP! ONE page! Good, huh.

Ok, well before you (or I!) go thinking I'm just a total failure, I switched over to my digital project I've been working on for, oh, awhile now. I'm putting together a book of 2009 pictures and journaling from our lives last year. We did a lot... I took a lot of pictures... and I wrote a lot on my blog capturing it. Imagine that! I accomplished EXACTLY what I had set out to do when I started this blog in September 2008. I had jotted down so many things that I have simply forgotten now that it's just truly amazing. I am so glad I did because it was SO FUN going back and reading them. And that's just from the past year!! LOL

Then.... it brought up the fact that I haven't been good at blogging this year at all. Not at all. There have been many distractions, that's for sure. However, there were many last year too. I think I just lost the focus on why I was doing this for awhile. I can tell you, my little weekend away and working on my 2009 project, brought it back to WHY I did this and helped to refocus me to do it more often. 2010 - will be probably a bit lite, but hey, it's better to start now then not capture anything in 2010.

Brings me to today's information - little miss Rachel is having all her wisdom teeth taken out today - in about an hour. Scares me to death. Why? Psychoanalyzing myself.... (not wise, probably) It's because I have a deep down core fear of dentistry. I can handle all sorts of other pains, aches, surgeries, births. But tell me someone has to do something to my teeth and I am scared to death. My fears.. not hers. Don't think she's worried about this in the least. I'm trying really hard not to project my fears on to her so hopefully, it stays that way. (And she doesn't read my blog until afterwards!). I'm sure everything will turn out just fine as well.

I'll update later today probably with how things went and if I'm lucky, a picture or two!

Whew... I've been gone awhile....

Perhaps soon I'll change my blog from Easter to summer... LOL!! Yea... it's been crazy.

Anyway.. what have I been doing? Lots and lots and lots. Maybe I'll be able to blog about it all soon.

First thing's first.... I've been spending a fair amount of time learning to use my Lightroom really well. Just came up with this collage of my little nieces/nephew. I think it looks pretty nice!

In other news.... we had a first around here today. Luckily, no one was hurt! A little shook up though! Rachel was involved in her first car accident today. She and a friend were on their way to Galveston (in my jeep.. unfortunately) and while they were traveling down 61st street towards the Seawall, some dude comes barreling out of a gas station without yielding and sideswipes the right front panel of the Jeep! Luckily she saw him and put her breaks on or who knows where they would have hit the car. Everyone is fine...... The stupid dude sped off at 70 mph so he couldn't be held accountable for his actions! Given his car was already pretty beat up, I would imagine he doesn't have insurance either. Fun stuff. Get to fix my jeep now!

Back again soon... hopefully.