Doctors, Doctors and More Doctors

This has been a month of Drs appointments, seven visits so far, with one more to go.  We also had two visits to the lab for blood draws.    As I mentioned in my post The World Keeps Spinning my youngest daughter has not been feeling well for a couple of months.    She spent most of the month on the couch, but we are finally figuring out why she has been sick.  

We saw the pediatrician at the very end of February with vertigo, headaches, and light headedness.  She referred us to the ENT.   The ENT did not find anything wrong with her inner ears, and thought the symptoms were being caused by her headaches. He said the next step would to be the neurologist.   A couple of days after the ENT, it was time for our monthly Orthodontist appointment.  She is very close to getting her braces off.  Just a few more months of wearing her bands.  Unfortunately with the headaches she has not been wearing them as much as she should,  so she might have to keep them on a month longer.   A few days after the ENT, it was time for the neurologist.    He diagnosed her as having migraines. He headaches had been becoming a lot worse, and very frequent.   He said he was not going to order a MRI because she was wearing braces. It seems if you have braces you can not have an MRI unless you go to the Orthodontist and have them removed.  Once the MRI is over, you can put them back on. Since we are so close to the end, he said it was definitely not worth going through all the trouble.  He put her on a preventative med that will take a few weeks to kick in.  We were relieved to have a diagnosis, but the headaches seemed to get much worse after starting her new med.  

One of the only things that seemed to help was drinking caffeine.  OTC Ibuprofen was not really helping much. Yesterday he prescribed a daily pain med to take twice a day until the preventatives kick in, which he said could be at least two more weeks.  Last week,  she was supposed to be in dance class, but was having another bad migraine.  She leaned her head back against the wall, and I saw her thyroid was very swollen.  

I took some photos to show the pediatrician, since I was taking her older sister there for her yearly check up this week.  She took one look at this photo and said we had to bring her in right away. We saw the Dr. yesterday. It was not quite swollen as it was the day I took the picture, but it was still a lot larger than it should be.  This is not the first time we have had dealt with thyroid issues in the family.   A couple of years ago I had my own issues which you can read about here.  Her older sister also has issues with her thyroid.  After her appointment, we went straight to the lab for a blood draw.  We got the results today.  Her numbers are good, BUT she tested positive for antibodies.   She too, has an autoimmune thyroid.  Having this could be the reason why she has been having so many headaches and other issues.  There is some positive news to finding out about this so young. With our family history, there was a very high chance she was going to develop it at some point in her life. Since we already knows she has it, we can regularly monitor her thyroid, and keep it in check before it gets really bad..  

A couple of the appointments this month were for my oldest.  She saw went to the Endocronologist early in the month  Remember this?  It took us an hour and a half to drive the 20  miles to the appointment. 

This week she had a well check up, and a routine blood draw.  She is going to have an ultrasound next week because she has been having a lot of stomach pains.  We are checking to make sure she does not have PCOS, or something else causing all the pain. She has been really worried that it is something more serious (thanks internet!) .   Next month we already have several more appointments on the schedule.   We have  follow up appointments at the Endocrinologist, Orthodontist and Neurologist.  I am also going to get into the mix and go to my annual physical (4 months late!)  Hopefully  things will slow down after that, at least go down to only one or two Dr appointments a month.  

The World Keeps on Spinning..

February has traditionally not been a good month health wise for my youngest daughter.  

Three years ago she was diagnosed with mono. We had taken her to the ER with severe stomach pains that we thought could have been appendicitis. We were all surprised we the test results came back that she had mono instead.  To this day, we still have no idea where she would have caught it.   She ended up having complications, and was pretty much out of commission most of the month.

The Week of Mishaps

This week is the reason why I named my blog Surviving the Crazy Life.  It was a week of mishaps, which has made life a little extra crazy..   This week I have been  trying to finish planning a party for my daughter's birthday.   As a party blogger on my other blog Pams Party & Practical Tips, I knew how much time I would need to get everything on my to do list done.   I also know that living with three teenagers, things rarely go as planned.   On Thursday, we went grocery shopping to get the food we needed for the party.  In the check out lane, a 2 liter of pop was accidentally  dropped.  It hit the ground so hard that the lid popped off, and we got a sticky shower.  A few minutes before there had been several people in line behind us.  Luckily they had just opened another lane, and there was only one person left in line and she was out of shower range.  Someone from customer service closed the land behind us so it could be cleaned up, and offered to ring the lady behind us up in another lane.  My flip flops are still sticky from the pop shower.  I think I need to take them outside,  and hose them off.  

As you know, I have two newly permitted drivers.   We have "survived" our first, and hopefully last accident.  I promised when taking pictures of the car, not to "share" who the person driving was.  It was an honest, but expensive mistake.    We were near our home picking up subs for dinner.  I  mentioned that since we were only a mile from home, maybe they would like to drive.   Since they are not really experienced in backing up, I parked in the  part of the parking lot where there was not a lot of traffic.   As they were backing up, I could tell they were nervous.  It did not help that another car had pulled into the parking lot and was impatiently waiting for us.  I told my driver to pull back into the spot to let the car get out of the way.  They did, but instead of hitting the brake, they  got flustered and hit the gas instead.  We hit the curb very hard, which popped the front left tire. We also went several feet into the grass.  Several people saw what happened, and came over to make sure we were okay.  We were, but we could not move the car.  A lot of phone calls had to be made, and it sat like this for several hours.   It had to be towed to a nearby collision shop, and hopefully I will get it back in a couple of days.,  

The party has been going on without any major mishaps, just a few minor ones..  A forgotten cell phone charger, and me missing a step and bruising my arm. One thing nice about having older kids is the parties we have are a lot less structured.   My daughter even told me that she did not want "planned" activities.  She said she just wanted to hang out with her friends, and maybe do activities if they felt like it.  While it is kind of a bummer not to plan any themed games etc,  it does take a lot of the pressure off.   We do have a few craft ideas if the girls feel like making them.  They did do one so far, but the party is not over yet so we will see what happens.