Thursday, July 8, 2010

Dr. Baldrate & Friends

Phew, what a week we're having! Tuesday morning Imogene had speech therapy. Wednesday morning she had occupational therapy, and Lily stayed home with a new babysitter, named Michelle. This morning the whole Sigler family visited Dr. Baldrate. Then the girls and I picked up Maggie and came home. Imogene and I will leave for physical therapy in a little bit. In the middle of all this, Imogene has been waking up many, many times at night, and refusing to go to sleep at bedtime. And Lily has shown some serious temper this week.
Speech therapy went well. Imogene was engaged by DeeDee and even imitated "ho ho" (there is a santa claus toy she has) and "whee" for when the toys go down the little slide. DeeDee does think she is eating almost entirely on the left side of her mouth, so we are supposed to try and get her to chew things like a pretzel stick or a Popsicle on the left. This would be easy to do, if Imogene weren't really, really feisty and temperamental these days. If she does not want help with something, she will pitch a fit and flail all around. She has such a temper that little girl!
Imogene did not enjoy the electronic stimulation on her arm in OT yesterday. She tolerated the constraint therapy pretty well, but every time the stim machine turned on, she just cried and buried her head in lap. With all the walking while holding your hands she is doing, Imogene is not getting much weight-bearing done on her right arm.  But hopefully once she gets to walking and getting up and down on her own she'll start doing it again out of necessity. In the meantime we'll keep watch to make sure her arm and fist don't get too tight.
It was a pretty good visit with Dr. Baldrate for Imogene's 18 month check-up and pre-op appointment. Imogene weighs 21 lbs 2 oz, which brings her up to 10% percentile. What an improvement! She is 30 1/4 inches tall, which is still 25% and her head stayed in the 50%. For those of you who remember Lily at this age, she was 24 lbs 6 oz and 32 1/2 inches, and her head was 97%! Such a difference! But Dr. Baldrate was really pleased with the weight gain, so we don't have to go back for 3 months, instead of our usual 6 weeks. Of course, 'normally' you don't go back for 6 months, but then what's normal about us these days?
She got her two shots, and cried a little bit. She hated the band-aids so much that she pulled the one on her right arm off on the way home, and fussed until I got the one off her left! Dr. Baldrate filled out the forms for the eye surgery (July 19) and now I just have to remember to send them with Bill tomorrow to fax them to the hospital. Let's hope I remember! Maybe if you read this you should send me an email reminder! :)
In response to the full-body rash from June, Lily had blood drawn (in the arm with the butterfly needle and tourniquet) today to run a wide range of allergy testing. She had a small outbreak of hives on her back while we were in SC, and is just always itching, so we decided to just see if anything comes back. She really was brave, and she cried, but didn't pitch a fit or anything. When the nurse was getting her ready she asked her how old she was and in this sad little voice Lily said, "ffff-our." She said on the way home she wasn't brave because she cried. But boy did she milk that for what it was worth and held her arm all protected for hours afterwards.
Did I mention that it was 102 and 103 here the last two days? We went to the mall Tuesday because I just couldn't bear the idea of taking both of them anywhere, even the pool, that involved being outdoors. Yesterday in the afternoon we took a trip for ice cream and the library and it was still just sweltering to do those tiny activities! It's a little better today, but not a lot!

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