Our First Appointment With The New Doctor

I love this new Dr --- here is what is going on............

Referral to Developmental Pediatrician. I guess this is the only one in our area - he has a 12 month wait -- YEP you read that right 12 month wait YIKES. I talked to his receptionist and she said they have a meeting every Thursday to go over possible new patients. He likes to take the younger ones first and considering all the information I was able to give her she thinks Zachary will get in rather fast 2 - 3 months, if not sooner. I don't know if it is a good or bad thing that he can get in that fast - good, because he needs to be seen - bad, because I'm faced with more of a reality with his issues.

Referral to GI: In her opinion this should have been done long ago.

Referral to Nutritionist: To find out how much he is eating and what he could eat to help with weight gain.

Referral to Geneticist: She thinks there may be an underlying syndrome that we don't know about - Fragile X was brought up but she said it could be something else.

Referral to Dentist - she thinks his mouth is too small for all of his teeth. At 24 months a child should have 20 teeth - at almost 20 months Zach only has 10 and some of those have stopped growing, also his mouth doesn't look like it is going to be big enough to fit his teeth.

TONS I mean TONS of blood work to be drawn

An x-ray of his hand for bone age - she predicts it is going to be around 12 months, but we need to make sure.

She was very supportive of therapy. She is concerned that he has autistic traits. She says there is no doubt he is FTT (failure to thrive) and should have been taken more seriously before. She had a very hard time getting his reflexes to react and was worried about his muscle tone.

Today on my scale at home he weighed 19.6lbs on their scale he was 20.6lbs - he was also only 30 inches in height. When she plotted his stats on the chart he wasn't even on it -- NO SURPRISE there! Heck my son still fits into 6 month size clothing and he is just shy of 20 months old.

Overall she was great - she listened to everything I had to say. She had her own questions. I could tell she was genuinely concerned for Zachary's well being.

So there it is, all laid out - I should have done this months ago - but hell, you put your trust in the Doctors hands. I think our old Doctor is wonderful - she treated Zoe for over 4 years and was great with her -- but give her a special child and I think all goes out the door. I'm mad at myself for waiting to find a new Doctor. I think part of me wanted so bad for everything to be normal or okay and to change Doctors was admitting something wasn't normal or okay. We are on a good track now - now we need to really face these situations head on.