Today was
Kamryn's 4 month pediatrician appointment. We, and everyone else around us, have been waiting for this one to see how she is measuring up these days. (because it affects the
meds and she's just ginormous!)
She weighed 18 lb. 10 oz. and was 27 inches long, which literally put her "off the charts" in both categories. She is above the 100
th percentile mark. The doctor remarked that he had a some 1 year
olds that were her size. Yikes! He looked at his chart a little more and said that this height and weight was average (50
th percentile) for 9 month
olds. We knew she'd been growing the last two months, but
geez!!! At her two month visit, she was just around the 50
th percentile for her age.
He thinks that is a good time to go ahead and introduce solids. So we'll have our first round of cereal this week. Look for pictures soon.
She also got the second round of a set of four vaccines today, one orally and three shots. She didn't care for that much, but settled down fairly quickly. She went to work with me for an hour, since I was running late to a meeting from her appointment. The folks at the campus I was at appreciated her attending the meeting. Of course, we may not have been as productive as normal...
Other Kamryn related stuff:
She hasn't had a seizure since Thursday.
Her dedication at church is this weekend.
On to the other problem child...
No, not the crazy 3-year old, it's the 7 year old,
Wylee. Last night, he was his normal busy active self. This morning he woke up and wouldn't eat and was very lethargic and just laid around all morning. Obviously, not his normal self. He also has a
booboo on his leg, which we thought could be getting infected making him feel bad. So we scheduled an
appt this afternoon at the vet.
At the vet, he was running a fever (whatever that is for a dog) and was walking gingerly. We thought it was due to his leg
booboo at first, but it wasn't it. (This will eventually get into "Too Much Information" land, so feel free to skip to the end, if you don't want to hear about doggy insides.)
For a year now, we've been operating under the assumption that he had a small hernia, which appeared to be a bulge on his belly by his rear leg. Today, though I hadn't noticed it when I put him in the car, the "bulge" had substantially increased in size and was red and inflamed looking. The doctor decided that was what was making him feel bad, as it was red and angry looking and much bigger than it has been for the last year. They tapped the bulge to see what kind of liquid was in it, and got nothing but some bloody liquid. She prepared a slide of it to study and then also talked other options with me. We could do a rectal to see if everything was where it was suppose to be, an x-ray to see if they could determine if any organs were in what appeared to be the hernia, or a sonogram, which they were not
equipped for at 5 pm. So we did two of the three...
The rectal turned out to be inconclusive, she had small hands and he was too large a dog to really get a good feel for the matter... We went ahead and did the x-ray, hoping to get a good shot of the abdomen to see if we could determine if there was indeed a perforation of the abdominal wall and if there were organs that were trapped in the hernia that could be having blood circulation cut off to them, which could end up being a fatal issue if not dealt with in a timely enough manner.
After the x-ray was developed, she showed it to me and explained it enough for me to understand. There was a very clear abdominal wall, and appeared to be in tact with no perforations. All of the organs (liver, intestines, bladder, etc) were in place and accounted for above the abdominal wall. All of this means that it is almost certainly not a hernia.
The problem is... what is it? (Not that we haven't played that game before!) Right now she is calling it a "mass." It could be a tumor of some sort
or possibly be cancerous, but we don't know right now. Most likely he will need surgery, but that can't happen until the swelling and
inflammation goes down. So, she prescribed an antibiotic and anti-
inflammatory and wants to see him on Thursday to decide how to proceed, but if he isn't back to himself tomorrow afternoon, she thinks we should bring him in.
Hopefully the mediation will do it's job and
Wylee will start feeling better. He looks pretty pathetic right now. We'll keep you updated on this saga as it unfolds.
Toting her lunch box.
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