Thursday, September 29, 2005

Doctor's visit

I just switched over from another blogsite so the next few posts are copied from that.
Entered on 22.09.05:
We took Kendra to see a paediatric neurologist today for an assessment. Our normal paed said we only need to take her for an assessment at 1 year of age but after doing some research and speaking to moms of other special needs children we decided to take her now. I am also concerned about her eye. Anyway, Dr van der Walt was lovely. She got a full history from us and did a thorough examination. She says Kendra still has the muscle tone of an 8 week old but in other ways, like her 'talking', she is more developed. She responds to us talking to her and smiles quite a bit now. She will need to continue with physio regularly.
Dr van der Walt also wants us to take her for a skull xray, although this is not critical, just to give her an idea of whether the skull is fused on the side. It won't affect her too much if it is maybe just her head shape. She weighs 5.2kg now, more than double her birth weight. The dr also says that she may take longer to walk than a normal child but she will walk eventually. All in all, I was happy with the assessment. The doc wants to see Kendra every 3 months to start with and says I must send her any info I find on JS. It is so nice to have a medical professional take an active interest in her condition. The geneticist at the Red Cross hospital had not even heard of the syndrome but did not even show an interest or ask us to bring her back at any stage.
Re comment to my previous posting: thank you for your comment. I think the 'failure to thrive' stems from any health problems they may have such as the problems with eating/swallowing.
Kendra has a big brother Branston(6) who is very proud of his little sister and who will also be featured quite a lot on this blog. Branston does not yet realise that there is something different with his sister, I think we will explain more when it becomes more noticeable. I am just thankful that I left such an age gap as I think it will be easier to deal with Kendra's special needs having a more independent sibling.

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