doctor appointments..

Today I had to take Liam for his yearly checkup with the developmental pediatrician. He didn't see the same Dr as last year.. so this doctor wasn't as in the know.. I suppose. He had a student with him. He did note to me and his student that fish oils Omega 3 and Omega 6 has proven to be beneficial in some recent medical studies. I stopped Liam on the fish oil to see how he would test on some blood testing addressing that without it, but he had that blood testing today so we will start back up. Need to buy some more also! Next pay day in 10 days I plan to order a bunch. For some reason the past few months or so we have been flat broke all the time. I don't know what it is .. but it is getting really frustrating! The next pay day it looks like we will finally be ahead.

Anyway, the doctor ordered a lead test and a genetic test for fragile x syndrome. I already knew a bit about both of these ailments/disorders. I don't think Liam will come up positive for either, but I am fine with thoroughness, as long as it isn't overkill or super invasive.

I did ask the doctor if he thought another possible causation for Liam to have all these issues could be that he has a mild cerebral palsy or another form of brain damage. He said he didn't think cerebral palsy likely because kids with cp have hypertonia and Liam has the opposite, hypotonia. He said some other form of brain damage could be possible, but that it wouldn't be much help to have an MRI. ( I am not sure what his reasoning is) And that in a year or so there will be some new form of super spiffy MRI that we might want to think about doing that new type of brain MRI at that point.

I speculate his reasoning may be that currently an MRI brain will be very hard to attain on a 4 year old being that you have to be perfectly still.. and it isn't really necessary because if it finds brain damage, that is good to know but it really won't change much for Liam, he will still need the exact same type of treatment that he currently is getting: lots of therapy targeting his specific deficits. The only thing that is likely with his symptoms is brain damage, and that means it won't get worse, and there isn't any treatment other than therapy that he is already getting. So I think maybe he thinks that if we were to do MRI now he would have to be sedated .. not really worth it if we don't really need to know if there is brain damage or not.. but, it would be nice to know. So if the technology improves and he can have MRI without sedation then it becomes worth it to see..
Well, he didn't say that but that is my guess. Suppose I should have gotten clarification, but for me, when dealing with doctors, I always think of the questions I really should have asked later on.
Liam was supposed to have another doctor appointment tomorrow but I decided to reschedule. Two days in a row driving so far to the doctor I just couldn't do it. Plus his blood work isn't done for that doctor, so better to wait anyway. After this appointment he may have one or two more with this same doctor and then hopefully doctor appointments should chill out for awhile. I hope. Well, that is about it. The grandparents are coming to visit this weekend until Wednesday, so I will be spending tomorrow cleaning and getting ready for guests.

Oh, also. Liam has started speaking more and more words now. He can say many single words with more consistency. I will write more about this and have wrote some other posts about this.. but I just thought about it, that he should really have a different term instead of mute now, because he is really speaking some real words now. I thought myself really clever because I thought up a term for him... "hard of speaking" It came to me reading a book about Deaf culture for sign class.. they talk about "hard of hearing" vs "deaf". So I thought, hey, Liam is more "hard of speaking" now than he is "mute".