Asthma kiddo take two and a rundown of a busy day!

I started the day off at the allergy doc for JR.  He has been on oral steroids for his asthma three times already this year so it was time for an action plan and something to curb the craziness(craziness referring to a four year old on steroids....talk about climbing the wall).  The visit went well.  She ended up putting him on flovent, a drug that asthma kiddo take one(oldest son) takes during the spring and fall months, so I am well acquainted with it.  The bad thing is that we had his two therapy appointments after that so we were at the hospital from 8 am until 12:30 pm.  By time we got home we were all three frazzled(did I mention I had to take the two year old too because Jim had a job interview) so we went through the drive thru at Burger King and went straight down for a nap.

A note about Burger King...mostly to myself....if you are on a gluten free diet and you decide to eat at burger king............do NOT eat breaded chicken and onion rings just because you are worn out and hungry beyond belief.  I sank into a "gluten" coma...the fog descended, the joints are achy, I bloated up like a balloon..yuck.  Next time I think I'll go to wendy's and have a baked potato!!!  Not worth it.  I'm wondering how long its going to take the "glutenated" feeling to go away???  We shall see.

I got an appointment with the developmental pediatrician!!!  August 9, so the clock is ticking.  That's not as bad as I was thinking it could be.  They said to expect three hours..argh.  Ah well.

On the illness front...I feel like I am at about 80% recovered.  It feels so good not to be coughing all the time. I haven't had an asthma flare up like that in quite awhile.

I hope your day was blessed in some way and I look forward to hopping around and reading everyone's blogs.  This definitely becomes habit forming!

Bobbi

ps.....Caitlin only had 1 accident today and that included all the time at the hospital waiting on JR's appointments!!!  Potty dance anyone??

Worried on Wednesday

JR is supposed to have an MRI on Friday.  Jim changed his class schedule to make sure he could be there.  Tonight JR started running a 102 degree fever.  hmmmmm....I don't know, but I suspect that they don't sedate little boys with fevers.  I will call in the morning but I suspect that we will be rescheduling the MRI.  

J.R.'s shape house from school

The house is the shape activity that he did at school.  I really like it....I wonder how much guidance she gave?? She seems to be really good with the kiddos. You can also see our Timmy Triangle stick puppet.  Our curriculum has you make a stick puppet for each shape and the kids loved him so much that they wanted one of their own to play with. So now we have triplet timmy triangles!!

Sissy had to have her picture taken too.  

A close up of the house.  This is how I memorialize my kiddos artwork.  I decided a long time ago to keep a few really special things and take pictures of any art or papers that I want to remember.  Four kiddos create A LOT of papers in one school year!

cutting triangles...scary stuff

Posting this so I have a record of how we're doing with our skills.  He scared me senseless trying to cut these out...he wanted his scissors to be an alligator and he was NOT paying attention....we quit with these two.  He didn't seem to have much motor control today with the scissors.

The perfect picture? I don't think so Mommy!!!

Did you ever see the potential for a really great picture and become faced with a preschooler who just wants to make goofy faces???  Sigh...never did get that picture, but I love these anyway because they show his personality.

note about pdd vs aspergers and what is our next step

This is a response to an email I sent a friend who counsels families with pdd, autism, aspergers and various other disorders/syndromes...he was so helpful...I'm mostly posting it here so it doesn't get lost but maybe it will help someone else too.


first I asked him if he could help me understand what it was.


PDD is an autistic disorder. In all categories in mental health there is a NOS diagnosis. Meaning Not Otherwise Specified. It basically means that in the professionals opinion that the diagnosis is in the Pervasive Development Disorder family (like Mood Disorder or Anxiety disorder is a family) but it doesn't fit any of the specific criteria of the other diagnoses. There are 4 main autistic disorders that vary in severity of functioning: Pure Autism, High Functioning Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, and PDD NOS. Aspergers Syndrome and PDD are very similar. With A.S. there can never be a speech delay which usually kicks kids out of that diagnosis entirely but still have very similar symptoms. Having said all that, I would wait til a developmental pediatrician saw him before you get too worried. This is not a neurologists area of specialty.
Nevertheless, a PDD diagnosis is not a death sentence just a package of looking at the delays. Social, language, and OCD/repetitive behaviors. These are the main areas the disorder affects.


Here I asked him if a neurologist is the right doc to diagnose this, and if JR's current level of treatment is appropriate.
The neurologist is not generally specialized in developmental delays. The treatment at this time is not different. The only time that matters is when he is enrolled in public school (which I hear is up in the air) after he turns 6 years old his diagnosis can not be "Child with Developmental Delay" for them to provide services. Even if you home school you will want them to be providing the services that you just described so you don't have to pay for it. He can have an IEP at school with a PDD diagnosis and they can pay for it and you can still home school if you want to. Children's Mercy does a great job but that is a long time to wait. Dr. Lyn Hoffman (male) does a very good job and is a bit cheaper as well. His wait list is probably more like 3-4 months.


Sometimes God puts people in your life for very specific reasons...my friend....I'll call him M....also helped me when I was struggling with the oldest son's add. 

Pervasive Developmental Disorder?

This is what the pediatric neurologist at Children's Mercy Says that JR has.  I have no clue.  He said that it is on the scale with autism.  JR doesn't have severe enough symptoms to be autistic, plus he interacts well with us...but he does have enough symptoms to have this.  Now I guess is my quest to figure out what this is.  Doc says the answer is therapy therapy and more therapy.  So we took him to the lab where they drew some blood and he got to pee in a cup(he thought that was cool)...and we scheduled him for an mri.  So we'll see.