When last we talked, Wylee had been to the vet on Tuesday with a follow up appt scheduled for Thursday. I never got back on the blog after that with all of the hubbub this weekend. Sorry!
So, Wylee's appointment on Thursday went as well as could be expected. The "mass" looked a lot less inflamed, but was still a little swollen. He saw a different vet than on Tuesday, but apparently the notes she left were very detailed and the nurse guy was the same, which helped. She tried to draw some liquid out of the mass, but didn't get much different than before. When she pulled the needle out of the area though, Wylee's swollen mass area began leaking. They thought it would just stop, but it didn't, so the vet tried to squish all of the liquid out. Wylee wasn't a big fan of that! When it just kept coming out, she asked for a bigger needle and poked him a few more times to help get more out. He really didn't like that. They didn't get it all out, but it slowed enough that they decided to stop.
The slide didn't show any cancerous cells, but there was no indication of what the "mass" actually was either. It think that God is trying to tell me something.
This vet thought that surgery was definitely in order to find out what was causing the issue. She wasn't able to do the surgery, the vet who would do it was not in town that week. They were going to consult with her, make sure she was comfortable doing the surgery, and then they would call us back. That was supposed to be today, but we didn't hear from them. We'll be calling tomorrow.
This weekend's hubbub...
The girls got lots of grandparent time this weekend. Dinner with Pepere and Memere on Friday, Grandma and Grandpa came in on Saturday, with visits from Memaw and Papa, Memere and Pepere, Tiffany, Kevin, Hunter, Mary Alice, Laurie, and Aubrey.
Dedication on Sunday went well. We were worried about Kenedy being nervous about being on stage in front of everyone in that great big church, so we had talked it up all weekend. Who knew it would backfire on us? She did a really good job on stage, but when the dedication was over and it was time to leave the stage, she whined very loudly, "but I want to stay on the stage!" for all to hear. The children's ministry coordinator, went ahead and mentioned the children's Christmas musical was coming up and that we may want to keep that in mind for Kenedy... : ) She is definitely all drama, besides the fact that she sings her way through most of the day, with big showtunes-style endings. I think she'll have quite the time in the musical!
We visited with Janma, Chad and Jamie, went to eat with the family and continued the busy-ness throughout the day.
I'll post pics from the weekend when someone sends them to me, as it is hard to be the one taking pictures when you are on stage.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Kamryn's Stats and The Other Problem Child
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 100th 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 (50th 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 50th 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.
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 100th 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 (50th 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 50th 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.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Update and Pics - Sept. 5
We're still continuing to have our ups and downs with Kamryn's seizures.
A. My district's insurance company switched Sept. 1, and I completely forgot, so when we finally talked to the neurologist and he prescribed a new medication, Trileptal, we tried to pick it up to the tune of $177.99, because it showed that my insurance had expired. Yikes! Then I had to go home and find the new cards which took a while since they were in a stack of unopened mail in a secretively marked envelope with a company name that I didn't recognize. By the time I found them, the pharmacy was closed and I had to wait until after work the next day to pick it up.
B. So, then she had another last night around 9 pm, which was about two hours before we were due to start her new medicine. Grrr.... We went ahead and gave her an extra pill of phenobarb and started the rest of the medicine as the doc had prescribed. We're taking her off of Keppra and starting the Trileptal slowly. For 1 week, we'll decrease her from 2 to 1 ml of Keppra and introduce 1/2 ml of the Trileptal. Then next week, no Keppra and 1 ml of Trileptal. I don't know a lot the new medicine or why he chose to switch her. I'm guessing that it is a little stronger than Keppra and used with older kids. Keppra was probably best for newborns and was hopefully going to be enough until she grew out of the seizures. But that doesn't appear to be the case just yet.
She did not have another seizure that night or at all today. She's acted like she felt fine and nothing is bothering her, except of course when she thinks we don't feed her enough! The girl would take down a Big Gulp if we'd let her!
We called and texted the neurologist today, but did not get a response. It's annoying, but I'm sure he feels the same about us. We're going to let it go for now, but if she has another, we'll be hounding him for some contact. I don't like us being the ones to just make up what to do with the medicines when she has a seizure, though we are getting pretty good at predicting what he would say...
Hopefully, the new medicines will prove effective for her. I'll keep y'all posted if anything changes significantly. Though we are having them from time to time, at least they are only singular occurances that we can get back under control fairly easily, not several day stints like before.
On a brighter note, here are some pictures that I took today of the girls. I was trying to get a good one of the two of them for them to put up during her dedication at church. There are also pictures of Kenedy at a birthday party. It was for her new friend from school, Evie. She had a blast running around the bouncy place with all of her little girl friends from school.
Didn't pick this one, it looks like Kamryn is getting the Heimlich.
Kenedy took this one... Another no...
Here's the winner!
This one was cute of just Kamryn...
Evie's Birthday... It took forever for her to move out of the toddler bouncyhouse!
With Evie in the little bouncy...
but when the others are this tall, who can blame her... She eventuall did it though.
Running around with the other little girls in the dino bouncyhouse.
Giving Evie her Princess stuff.
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