Diagnosis

Hollyn saw Dr. Karr again today.  Although Monday's labs aren't back yet, he feels confident diagnosing Hollyn with acquired Brown Syndrome. 

When she visited with her pediatrician on Monday, Dr. Rampton pulled up the letter he'd gotten from Dr. Karr and let me read it.  In the letter it states the suspicion of the diagnosis.  Dr. Rampton, being unfamiliar with Brown Syndrome, googled it. We looked at the images that popped up, then read about it on wikipedia.  And I thought to myself, how cool is it that doctors can look up information they're less familiar with on the spot these days?  I dunno, it just struck me as pretty neat.  We got to look over the symptoms, etc. together. :-)  And it does sound right.  She doesn't exhibit the other symptoms of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis which is the usual culprit of these eye issues.  Brown syndrome seems to fit.

She needed blood work done though.  I was NOT looking forward to that part.  When asked how I thought she'd do - because they were considering sending her to The Clinic where they have a more extensive lab and are used to drawing blood from children - I responded I was sure she'd cry and probably move and/or resist.  Well, I was quite wrong.  Not only did she not cry, or resist, she didn't even jump.  She didn't.even.blink!  She watched in fascination as the needle was inserted and the blood started to be drawn.  But it gets better.  When that site stopped getting any more blood out of it, they tried on her other arm.  THREE more times, but nothing was coming out.  Each time she didn't budge at all as she was poked.  At that point, though she did get pale and started whispering something, sounding distressed.  They removed the needle and she started to throw up.  A few minutes later and with a different technician (the one who usually does the little folks there) she got one last poke.  This time the rest of the blood was drawn.  And she paled again and started to whimper.  But she still never moved.  Hollyn was the absolute poster child for blood draws.  She did better than I've ever done!

Aaaanyway, that's where things stand.  We're hoping this episode will resolve like the last one.  If it doesn't (sometimes they don't) she would probably receive treatment where Dr. Karr would either manually move the eye where it belongs, or perform a corrective surgery.  Hopefully it won't get to that point, but at least there are things that can be tried/done.  Once again I'm so thankful for modern medicine!

P.S.  I remember a while ago writing about how we go a long stretch with no Dr. visits, then all of a sudden all my kids have things go wrong at once as we're seen twice a week for different reasons.  Well, after getting home from Dr. Ramptons on Monday I found out that while I was there Brennan in the mean time was in the office at school with an earache.  Of course he'd get an ear infection now.  And Kieran has an appt next week himself.  Sigh.  Parenthood!  Am I right?