Crazy week

Well it's a good thing we went on a two week vacation cause we came back to one doosy of a week! Tuesday Devin had his 6 month check up. It started out with measuring his length which is a whopping nearly 28 inches!! That's like the 95th percentile! His weight was 17 1/2 pounds not too bad like 40th percentile. Then the nurse measured his head circumference and we went back to the exam room, we were there for a couple minutes when she came back in and said she thought and hoped she'd written his head circumference down wrong, so she measured it two more times, said huh and left. I was like, 'I know he has a huge noggin, but it happens right?' Wrong. His doctor came in looking grave, and immediately measured his head FOUR times with two different measuring devices, then she went and got another one of the doctors to look at it, he measured it yet another two times, looked at his chart and said "I have no other explanation." I was officially concerned at this point. His doctor then showed me his growth chart and the line for his head circumference was more vertical than horizontal and now out of the colored area. In the 102nd percentile to be exact. She then explained to me that it was very alarming to her that when he was born his head size was in like the 15th percentile, at 2 months it was in the 20th then at 4 months it was in the 70th and now is off the charts. Something must be causing such dramatic growth...and some of those reasons are very seriously scary, some are very manageable. She then continued examining him, he looked fine in every other way, but she noticed that there was a soft spot on the top of his head that was pulsing. She told me that showed her for sure there was undue pressure in his head. She then told me she was ordering a CT scan to determine what was causing that pressure, but that she was going to make the appointment as it can be hard to get into radiology at PCMC quickly. She managed to get him in two days later on Thursday morning. Wednesday I took Elizabeth to her 3 year check up, which she rocked! She is 37 inches tall(only 9 inches taller than her 2 1/2 years younger brother!) 60th percentile, she weighed in at 31 pounds almost 40th percentile YAY! Then there was the intellectual evaluation that I could tell Sandvig was ready for as she brought with her the 4,5, and 6 year old charts as well. Sandvig gave up on the 3 year old chart within 5 or 6 questions as Elizabeth kept looking at her like "you're kidding right?" she whipped right through the 4 year old chart and touched points on the 5 and 6 year old charts! She is such a show off with Sandvig!! She identified all her letters, most of the basic sounds, counted to 2o like it was nothing, identified numbers up to 20, she also got 22, 23 and 25. She picked out vowels from consonants, she could name all four seasons, the days of the week, and most of the months. She was way more willing and cooperative than she ever is with me! Then she examined her and she looked great...except(there always seem to be an except!) she noticed her breathing was really labored, she was wheezing and her oxygen level was low again, and when I told her she'd just had a nebulizer treatment less than 2 hours ago, she knew what we were doing just wasn't working. So Elizabeth is now on Flovent which is a maintenance medication and steroid, super strong doses for a week then regular doses til spring. It also is in an inhaler form, so we also had to purchase an Aero Chamber with mask to deliver it to her. She was also put on a larger, more concentrated dose of albuterol through inhaler. And as our crappy insurance only covered like $20 of the $220 of it we were left to pay the remaining $200, which we simply didn't have. Luckily my parents we able to help us out, thank you soooooooo much mom and dad!!! Thursday I dropped Elizabeth off with a wonderful neighbor who watched her while I took Devin for his CT. I barely had time to sit down after checking in before they called his name, he did good for the test and it was over in no time. I got a call just a couple hours later from Sandvig which worried me cause her nurse had always called with results in the past. She explained the the Scan showed quite a bit of "excess fluid" around Devin's brain, you know in the space that the brain is supposed to grow into the skull. She said that it was just over the boarder line of "take immediate action", but was a little more than the "no need to worry it'll take care of itself for sure" line. But not wanting to cut a whole in the back of his head for nothing, she told me she felt good with leaving it be and checking it again when he's 9 months. She said she felt confident that it could very well take care of itself, and that no damage is expected from leaving it be. In all honestly it's far more complicated than I could ever really explain here but I have faith that everything will work out just as our Heavenly Father has planned, though I will admit there have been parts of His plan for us in the past year that I'd totally left out of MY plan, but even so I trust in Him. I feel in my heart that Devin's got this on his own, he's a strong boy and he's a trooper!! But what causes this you may ask. Sometimes genetics, if Tony or I or even one of our parent's had a HUGE head we could pin it on that...but we just don't, in fact my dad and I have tiny heads. When she told me what she suspects caused it I must admit I was already guiltily thinking the exact thing. Radiation exposure in the womb...oh say like 5 MRI's can definitely cause this to occur, I am however so grateful it isn't any worse. There may or may not be any future "issues" due to the undue pressure on his brain, but the good news is for now he shows no ill effects from it, he's a happy healthy developmentally right on track(other than being seriously top heavy making milestones like sitting independently a bit harder) tall boy!! We had to drive back up to the Moran Eye Center(which is right next to PCMC) Thursday afternoon, as Elizabeth's glasses were in dyer need of repair. Ellen replaced three screws and the nose pads, and then of course had to adjust them so they weren't crooked on her face. And that was our week. I'm ready for another vacation!