Appointments

Yesterday was a long day!

First Drew had a dentist appointment at 8:30. I knew he would probably not enjoy having to lay down while people wearing scrubs and gloves hovered over him, and I was right. He is so good though! He didn't like it and he cried (sometimes screamed) through his cleaning, but he did open his mouth when they told him to, held still, etc. When it was time for the exam he did much better, opening his mouth for the dentist to "count" his sparkly teeth. He was handsomely rewarded with a blow up dinosaur toy and dinosaur stickers. The best part of the cleaning is that they were able to get the iron stain off his teeth that turned them gray when he was in the hospital. Now they are bright white again!

We got home from that appointment at 10:15 and headed out to UCSF at about 10:30. Our appointment was at 1:00. So we packed lunches and snacks for the road and Drew was a very good traveler, spending most of the trip watching Veggie Tales and cracking me up with his rendition of the opening song. We got to UCSF right on time and saw a the doctor around 2. The immunologist specializes in kids with 22q and she normally doesn't have a lot of encouraging things to say. But this time she told me she was very impressed with how far Drew's come. He had his developmental assessment in April and Dr. Wara said that he scored about average for his age. She told me that this is much better than most of the kids she sees with 22q and that it is something to be really happy about. She said we can expect him to do as well as any other kid his age in school. I did ask about the funky immunology labs we got at Stanford. She said she could not think of an explanation for those "normal" results and she was very interested to see the labs from this visit. I told her I thought maybe they got his blood mixed up with another kid and she thinks that is quite possible. I'm still hoping it was an immunology miracle and his levels will be high enough that he can have his live virus vaccines, but I don't really think that is the case. We will see her again in four months.

We headed over to the lab and the phlebotomist is really good and always gets blood on the first try. I guess she had an off day though, because it took her two tries this time. Drew did really well, he definitely hated it, but he didn't scream as loud as he did at the dentist and he calmed down quickly. Afterwards I took him across the street to the gift shop where he picked a prize of m&ms. Then we began the drive home from SF in work traffic. UGH. Three hours later we were finally home!