Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Headache Clinic Appointment

KayTar is doing much better! She's back to tolerating her full feeds and eating a bit by mouth, too. Judging by her performance at the neurologist yesterday, she's back at 150%. However, I'm sick now! I'm on day 3 of this yucky head cold. Day 2 my ear started hurting and this morning it feels like it is starting to settle in my lungs, as is my ritual.

Speaking of the neurologist, she saw a new one yesterday. Her previous neuro referred us to this new doctor at the headache clinic. She was nice and quite thorough, we went back over 5 years or so of KayTar's neuro records...but I was having a difficult time maintaining my stream of thought for more than .38 seconds because KayTar was ON! She was talking and hopping and talking and talking and talking. I tried to entertain her by offering her my iPad while the doctor and I talked, but that work for about 2/5th of a minute. The doctor sent her to the nurse's station to get crayons and a coloring book, which worked initially for about 2.15 minutes, and roughly .47 minutes with each redirection. I'm glad it was a low acuity visit, because I didn't have a lot of questions to remember and most of the important facts were accessible in the hospital records. I also brought my iPad which has a list and description of all of her recent headaches in it. Though, I'm pretty nervous about her BIG appointment with the mito specialist next week, because I'll definitely need to focus then. I may have to bring along a friend to play with KayTar during the boring talking parts. She just LOVES new people and wants to tell them every little bit about her life...she is also a performer at heart, so to her physician=captive audience. The best kind of audience!

Anyway, the doctor didn't have any theories as to why the headaches started and were so frequent in April (she's had 1 or 2 otherwise, but a ton in April), but we are supposed to keep a headache diary between now and her next visit, in November, so she can see a couple of months without school and a couple of months with school to see if there is any difference in the frequency. We are also supposed to up her Motrin dose now that she is at 20kg and give her a 4-8oz bolus of Gatorade when she has a headache. She said sometimes that will kick it more effectively. Worth a try! She also said KayTar was the most proportionate kid she has seen in a long time, as her height, weight, and head circumference are all right in that 25-50 percentile. Hooray for Pediasure! She also complimented her on being such good sleeper, as she usually get 11-12 hours a night. For being a not so healthy kid, she is pretty healthy. ;) So that is the latest, hopefully we won't have too much to document in the headache diary...I'd be totally happy if we didn't see anymore of those little buggers.

Speaking of her growth...look at how much she's changed this year! Yesterday she told the doctor that she "had exited Kindergarten and turned the corner into first grade!" My little big girl.

4 comments:

Katie said...

I think I have a headache after trying to figure out those 2/5 of a minute calculations =P

Hope you feel better!

Kaytar is just changing so much!

jo(e) said...

She's getting so old!

Hope everyone is feeling better by now.

InTheFastLane said...

You need to get that girl involved in a Drama camp! :)

~aj~ said...

I'm glad she's feeling so much better and is back to her outgoing self once again. Hope that you are feeling better soon too!