Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Busy, Busy Boy

Monday was a busy day! We started off with our annual reassessment of Carter's PT needs. His special instructor, PT, and his Early Intervention case worker were all present for the meeting. He's done really well and has met the majority of his goals. One of our concerns has been his foot placement while walking - he has a hard time straightening his feet to point forward, and he also has extreme pronation. He tends to walk much better with shoes on, because of the added ankle stability. The PT recommended a special SMO brace that will help with the pronation, and hopefully give him a little more stability while he's perfecting his walking. The direction of his toes may not be an easy fix, as we both agreed that it may be more from his hips "floating" rather than an ankle/foot problem. She was able to call our orthopedic doctor and get us a prescription and an appointment with the orthotist so we wouldn't have to make a separate trip.
 
As soon as we finished that we loaded up and headed north to Children's. The nephrology clinic was super busy, and we waited for a long time to be seen. Something went wonky with our orders, so we didn't go down to the lab until after we'd already seen Mary Jane, and she said since he'd been so stable she felt comfortable letting us head out and she would call us with the results. We waited for a while at the lab, too, and then finally finished and headed to Biotech.
 
While we were at Biotech getting C fitted for his new SMOs, Mary Jane called and let us know that his labs were not great. His white cells were high, his creatinine had creeped back up, and his iron was starting to decline again. She figured he was probably brewing a UTI, and asked that we take him to the pediatrician Tuesday to have a urinalysis started. She wants us to have labs drawn locally soon to make sure his white cells and creatinine stabilize post-UTI and run some additional tests for iron absorption. Sure enough, the initial dip at the pediatrician yesterday showed a UTI, so we started antibiotics today. We're thankful we caught it early, and are praying that his numbers stabilize by the next lab draw.