SB Clinic

Well.............spent another morning sitting in a tiny room at Sanford Children's Specialty Hospital trying to entertain a 3 year old while the SB specialists at the clinic parade through our room.  They spend a whole 10 minutes with her, then we wait and wait 30-40 minutes for the next specialist.  I told the coordinating doctor that there has to be a better system, but they seem to think they have done a great thing by putting all the doctors in one place to reduce the number of appointments, so I'm guessing it won't change soon.

The final consensus is that we should wait for Quinn to have surgery until she is around 5-6 years old, unless she begins to show symptoms of tethered cord.  I have mixed feelings about the directive to wait- as she gets older, she will be more susceptible to comments that kids make about her bump (mylomeningecoele) and I don't want her to become self conscious about it or have her feelings hurt.  However, I am in no way anxious to have her go through surgery, and the neurologist says that it's easier to operate around all of those nerves if they are larger, so I know it's in her best interest to wait. 

However, we couldn't be more thrilled on how well she is doing and on her progress so far!  The ultrasound of her kidneys showed that they are healthy and not showing any damage, and as we all know in this household- THIS GIRL IS POTTY TRAINED!!  This is amazing, since we originally thought she would never be continent and that I would have to catheterize her daily.  She has grown 6 inches and gained 20 lbs, now losing 5 lbs (thank GOD!) Her diet is solid and her lactose intolerance isn't causing her as much grief as I had first thought it would.  Her foot positioning and walking is right on the mark, and she will not need AFOs or any type of bracing as originally thought. 

Truthfully, could we ask for any more good news? 

Then the OT and Early Childhood gals came in to test Quinn on her developmental milestones, and she blew us all away!  She is testing high in the 36-60 month range and she is just 38 months old, and considering she spent 2 years in an orphanage and had to learn a new language this past year, that is amazing to me.

 The fun part was watching her work the blocks- she was given 10 square blocks and shown to make a tower with them.  She got up to 9 blocks and on the 10th, her tower tipped over. She only needed to stack 9 of them all to pass that test, so she passed, and then she did something that astonished the therapist- she began to build a double tower with the blocks so it wouldn't fall over, using one tower to brace the other tower.

Crazy, right?  Of course, I commented that Quinn was clever, but I guess I wasn't sufficiently impressed for the therapist.

 The therapist turns to me and says "Do you see that?  That's AMAZING  for a 3 year old to have problem solving skills like that." Then, Quinn asked for more blocks, and she proceeded to build a foundation around the base of the tower to further strengthen it!

Yep, my daughter is going to be an architect when she grows up :-)