A trip to the city

Last Thursday Drew had an immunology appointment at UCSF. When he was born there wasn't a pediatric immunologist in Sacramento that we could see. I'm still not sure if there is one now, but we've been making the trip into the city every six months since he was born to see Dr. W, and we have become a bit attached to her. She knows a lot about kids with 22q and even though she isn't always the most positive, I feel I can trust her when she says something.

Normally Dan would go with me to this appointment, but he had already missed two days of work this week because of our vacation, so he couldn't take any more time off. I had a friend who offered to take Ava for me, but I had to weigh my options: leave Ava behind and have a much easier time at the doctor's office, but give up using the carpool lane, or bring her with me and endure hellish sibling rivalry during the 2 hour appointment and blood draw, but speed past people on the way home. Hmm. It was a hard decision, until my friend Katie offered to come with me! God bless her, this is her second time accompanying me into SF with her little girl Chloe. It makes the drive go by much faster if you have a friend to talk to!

We decided to make a day of it and take the kids to the San Francisco Zoo before Drew's appointment at one. The drive there was a breeze, the kids loved watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and we made it to the zoo in just under two hours. We didn't have a lot of time to walk around, but we did get to see everything we wanted to and we were very impressed with the exhibits and how uncrowded it was. Katie said we could make it a yearly tradition, so next year we plan to leave a little earlier and have more time at the zoo.

Us with the baby giraffes

Baby Gorilla

My cutie pies with the penguins

Chloe, Ava and Drew on the grizzly

Then we packed everyone up and headed to UCSF. It was only about 15 minutes from the zoo, but parking is always difficult there! Once again I was grateful that Katie was there to help me back into a space. Last time I was at UCSF I could not get out of the spot by myself and had to wait for these two ladies to help guide me out. Katie took Ava and Chloe to the food court while I took Drew to his appointment.

The appointment went well and after we talked about how Drew's been doing for the past year, Dr. W told me that Drew could get his live virus vaccines. I was so excited! I've been hoping and praying that he could get his MMR and chickenpox vaccines because I'm so nervous about him starting school and being exposed to kids who choose not to vaccinate. Normally Drew gets a blood test after each immunology appointment to check his t-cells, but this time the doctor said we could skip it and just do it next year. I was practically in tears, he can get his vaccines and no blood test!

Drew getting his bp checked

I was so excited we just hightailed it out of there. We were trying to get home in time for soccer practice at 5:30 (but it was not meant to be). So we're driving home and as I get onto the bay bridge I get a phone call from the doctor's office. Uh oh. They made a mistake and were looking at Drew's labs from Stanford (which we think were not good results) and when they looked at his most recent labs at UCSF they saw his levels were not high enough. We have to get another blood test and wait and see what the results are. Ugh. I was so bummed and I felt so stupid. I should have asked more questions, I should have known that was too good to be true. So they are going to send us the lab request and we'll have the test done out here. It'll probably be a week or two before we have the results, and realistically, he probably won't have high enough levels to get those vaccines.

The drive home was pretty awful too, it took nearly 3 and a half hours in ugly traffic. But we did get to use the carpool lane. The kids did fairly well, but we ran out of snacks and even movies couldn't keep them quiet for the long car ride. Drew fell asleep in the car, but Ava and Chloe (who both still take naps) stayed awake the whole time! Silly kids.