Felix the cat

Felix's thyroid seems to be improving with the medication he's been on. His T4 is now at 11.3 (up from 1.45) and his TSH is at 8.03 (down from 18.36). I actually have ZERO idea what that means, but the doctor seemed pleased. We increased this thryroid meds slightly and will test him yet again (because the last blood draw was such a pleasure!) in 2 weeks.

Although the last doctor was sure that this would be a life-long condition, our current doctor was very positive that he could outgrow this after as little as a year of being in the US and getting proper nutrition.

And just for kicks... I had to post this photo. These are a pair of the pants that we brought to Ethiopia with us at the end of April. We had to roll them up at the time. Think he's grown a little???


He looks like he's about to go wading in a creek. Thank goodness Christmas is coming up. I hope Santa brings him some new pants!

(Note to self: Must moisturize your son and clean the bottom of your fridge more often!)

Update to: Missing teeth?

Do you every have one of those "Duh!" moments? I have them with increasing frequency these days.

When we mentioned to the pediatrician at Children's Hospital that Macy and Felix were missing these teeth, he said he'd do some research and see what he could find. We were later told that he had no idea what or why this was.

So in my head I think, "Okay, I guess it will just be a mystery then."

Until someone today said how they looked it up online and found X, Y and Z about it.

DUH! I never thought of using this here interwebby to look for answers. Um, hello, I spend 23 hours a day online and never thought to Google this. As I said...frazzled mommy brain.

So....for anyone wondering, or anyone who also has children with missing teeth, here's the 411. I found quite a bit of information on this. This article, Dental Injuries Due to African Traditional Therapies for Diarrhea, in the Western Journal of Medicine pretty much says it all. Read the whole thing if you have time. If not, here are some of the major points:

• Many of the healers in Africa know little about healing practices involving the mouth.
• Said healers believe that removing the cuspids (either before or after they erupt) will cure or prevent diarrhea.
• They do this using unsterilized tools, in an assembly line fashion, without cleaning them between patients.
• "Tools" used include a metal nail, hot needle, metal blades made from spoon handles or bike tire spokes, or sharp fingernails.
• "Reports of traditional healing practices of many African countries in which the cuspids and incisors were removed or mutilated have been numerous: ... 59% among Ethiopian Jews... 70% in some populations in Ethiopia." (Not sure I understand these stats - are they saying 70% of the population?? I certainly didn't observe that when there.)

So, as Paul Harvey used to say... Now you know the rest of the story. Good day!

Missing teeth?

I keep forgetting to post / ask about / mention this here...

It seems that both Macy & Felix have evidently had their canine teeth pulled at some point.

According to our pediatric dentist, the adult teeth are there (she did x-rays). If this was a genetic thing (which she's never heard of) they wouldn't have the adult version of those teeth either. She feels confident after examining them in saying that they were pulled. The thing is that these teeth don't get really cavities, and there is no reason to pull them.

The adoption clinic at Children's Hospital was also stumped.

Anyone else have Ethiopian kids who were missing these teeth? Any idea why? We were kind of joking that somewhere in Ethiopia there's a person wearing a baby tooth necklace...yes, completely sick and inappropriate. That's how we roll.

More sickies :(

This weekend we got a call from Macy's pediatrician saying that her test results were in. She doesn't have a tapeworm like Felix. Yay! She does have ecoli and giardia. Boo.

In case any prospective or new Ethiopian adoptive parents are wondering, she had none of the outward signs / symptoms of either. Well, she hasn't gained any weight. That was what made me thing something may be wrong. The doctor didn't seem to think that the weight thing was a big deal and assumed that she was probably healthy. Glad we did the tests anyway. She's now on more medication. Speaking of which....I better go give it to her!

ER Trips - buy 5 get one free?

(This is a picture from the zoo that I forgot to include a few days ago. This is the hippo house and Felix was saying "Peeeee-uuuuu stiiiiiiinky!" It's one of my favorite things he's learned.)

I have a feeling we're going to need a punch card for the ER. Fletch was never the kid to get into things. We never had child locks because he just never touched the things he wasn't supposed to. All that has changed now with Felix though!

On Saturday after our zoo trip, we came home and I threw the backpack on the floor by the door. The next morning, Felix unzipped the bag, got out the sunscreen and proceeded to spray it directly into his eye.

When "flush with water", as advised on the can, didn't work, we called poison control. Yeah, for the 2nd time in 3 weeks. I expect social services to be knocking any time. They suggested a warm shower, which we did. After that, Felix fell asleep and slept for almost 4 hours. When he woke up, his eye was glued shut.

Poison Control suggested we go to the ER. Since there isn't a hospital in our fancy little town, we headed down the mountain. After much crying and thrashing we found that Felix had a scratched cornia. We were given medicine to put in his eye and it's healing quite nicely.

The following day, after being told "no" over and over and over again, Felix pulled a vase onto his head. No ER trip this time, thank goodness. But only because he had already fallen down in June and got a nasty bump, so we knew the signs to look for. Lucky us.

Yesterday we were at Children's Hospital (for Macy's appt, not for Felix) and finally turned in his stool sample. What fun that was! The doctor seemed to think that it wasn't important for us to do this since he appears to be healthy. Uh-huh. Today we found out that he has a tapeworm. fun stuff, fun stuff.

News on Felix

Last Thursday we took Felix to his appointment at Children's Hospital's International Adoption Clinic. They only make appointments to evaluate internationally adopted children on Thursday mornings, thus the reason we've waited so long.

This was the first time I've been to Children's Hospital -- it was like the Disney Land of hospitals! We met with several different doctors - a pediatrician with experience working in Africa, a Physical Therapist, Occupational Therapist, Psychologist - who all thought that Felix was amazing and healthy. Seriously. They were all impressed and saw no issues at all.

The pediatrician said that he may have been severely malnourished at one point, but that it looks like he's already made up for that, and he expects to see NO long term effects. The psychologist thought he was bonding well (as evidenced by all of the hugs and kisses he was giving out). She also gave us some bonding ideas and activities we could do. The PT expects him to be an athlete and the OT was impressed that he could do every task she threw at him from copying her stack of blocks to threading beads on a string.

Hooray!

Then came the blood work. I'm surprised that he had that much blood in his little body! He cried when they were taking it all, but stopped immediately when they took the needle out.

So we were very pleased with the appointment and our super star little boy.

Unfortunately the bad news came on Saturday when the doctor called us with the results of the blood work. It turns out that Felix has hypothyroidism which, if you're not familiar, is when the thyroid doesn't produce enough of it's hormone, which is a major regulator for many functions in the body.

The good news is that he does show some trace of the hormone, so his thyroid was working properly at some point. It is obviously decreasing, but this is most likely a recent-ish thing since he shows no outward symptoms of having hypothyroidism. Side effects would be limited physical growth and inability to learn. We know that he grew a LOT from the time his birth mother brought him in until the time when we left Ethiopia. And we know that he is one sharp cookie. What other 22 month old changes his own diaper, gets himself dressed, and can button his own shirt? Anyway, the doctor said if he had never produced the thyroid hormone he would be mentally retarded at this point.

The downside is that this requires lifelong treatment. It's not something that he will grow out of, or something that can be cured, so he'll be on medication for it forever. While I am sad about that for him, I am really thankful that it's "only" this. We've seen other children come home with issues that are much more severe, so I am glad that this is something manageable.

I also can't help but think what would have happened if Felix was still living in Ethiopia. There is no way that they would have ever known this (or been able to afford the medication to treat it). Eventually he would have stopped growing physically and mentally and he would have been just another one of the people we saw living (or dying) on the street. It's surreal to think about since we can see such HUGE potential in him. Maybe his birth mother saw that in him as well.

Macy girl

I've taken to calling her Macy Jane (which is not her name, but maybe we should reconsider that) or Macy girl. My grandfather calls me Kellie girl. Maybe that's where I get it from.

Well Macy girl had her first (emergency) dentist appointment today. All three kids are scheduled for check-ups in August, but Macy's tooth started bothering her last night and, by this morning, she was crying and wouldn't eat breakfast.

Marc took her into the dentist where we found out that her tooth is abscessed. She's now on antibiotics for the infection, and Tylenol with codeine for the pain. She'll go back in a week to see if it has heeled enough to do her root canal (!) and give her a crown. After that she'll go back to fill the multiple other cavities she has.

While I'm stressed about how we're going to pay for this, I'm thankful that we haven't encountered any more serious problems (knock on wood) yet. Of course, we have our big appointments at the International Adoption Clinic at Children's Hospital this month, so we'll see what they uncover. Wish us luck!