Jedidiah had two doctors appointments, in what seems like may be a string of appointments. Yesterday was his appointment with endocrinology. Not quite sure how to put it all on 'paper'. With a new doctor it was hard reading her. She did a lot of "Hmmmms" and "Huhs". But at the end when I asked her what her thought was as to how likely this was an endocrine issue, than say a cardio issue, her response was, "This is an endocrine issue, until proven otherwise." Our family doctor was in agreement with this statement as well.
Jed's GI doctor had told me at his last appointment, which was this past August, that his growth hormone reading from *last year* was 'a little on the low side'. Those were his exact words. That was far from the truth. The truth was that they were *very* low. His number read about 34. For his age, the range started at 100, and I think went to 120? Not quite sure on that upper number. But clearly that is far from normal. The endo doctor said that even if we were to take his bone age (according to his last bone scan), that the low range was 50! Still well below that level.
I had concerns as to why he was having trouble gaining weight as well, since I thought the growth hormones were responsible for height. Our family doctor told me that they are responsible for both. He feels the reason that Jed will gain a decent amount of weight and then stop is due to maxing out his growth hormone. Hmmm. Ok. Still odd. However, a low growth hormone (which he clearly does have, although it would be nice to know WHY) would be responsible for his low blood sugar problems. That certainly was a concern of mine since he started having problems with low blood sugar while on GAPS. And that seems pretty hard to do (being low) if there wasn't something going on in his body. GAPS would/should totally, TOTALLY control your blood sugar.
Do to the fact that the endo doctor thinks he does have a growth hormone issue she advised that we do the 'all inclusive' test, instead of taking another simple blood draw to get a base line reading. This way, we kill a few birds with one stone. This test would be demanded of by insurance before they will agree to cover the hormone injections. It is more involved as he will have to have an IV and a couple of different meds injected, with blood drawn in between. The meds would stress his pituitary gland, to see just how much growth hormone it is capable of putting out.
Today we had Jed's follow up with our family doctor about his chest x-ray. Our doctor feels that it is NOT asthma. He said for asthma to show up on an x-ray, it would have to be REALLY, REALLY bad. Clearly Jed has never had an asthmatic episode. He feels something else is going on, but to be that swollen he recommends we see a pulmonary specialist. Ugh. Now, granted while on homeopathy, Jed's cough went away. I'm still not sure if it came back while on GAPS, or right after we went off of it. Either way he just wants to know *why* his tubing is all swollen up. So another appointment will be popping up on the radar.
That is all we know for now. He has his appointment with cardiology next week. I am definitely itching to get to that appointment. At this point that is the only other possibility, that we can think of, that could be at the root of all of this and I want to see what becomes of it. If it's just an endo problem, then I do believe we will be going the medical route with the daily injections of growth hormone. This will be a 10-12 year stint. I feel at this point we have exhausted all of our natural resources, or they are totally out of our price range. As such we feel it would be best to do what is possible to help him to grow. The good news is that if for some reason a more natural route comes about, or we fall into money (wouldn't that be fun!), we could stop the injections. When I asked our doctor about any negative effects of stopping the injections he said the only one would be he would stop growing. In other words we would be in the same boat we are in now. I feel at peace knowing that he wouldn't suffer horribly if we had to stop. Not that it's not a good thing to not grow, but it's not like a diabetic just up and stopping their meds, which would spell disaster.
No comments:
Post a Comment