my so sweet boys

Monday we had a meeting with the new pediatric endocrinologist in Louisville. Luckily we both took a sick day from school so we could both go and meet her. She was very kind and professional. I am not sure of her ethnicity but she speaks with an accent and her name is virtually unpronouncable. However, she is not at all difficult to understand, which was a relief, because I wanted to make sure I could understand her.

She said that Whitaker has grown, but we don't know how much he grew before he started on the hormones, so we have to wait until we measure him again in four months, to get a new growth velocity on the growth hormones. Because he has gained a little weight, but more than what would correlate with his increase in heighth, keeping the dosage the same is actually like decreasing it a little since dosages are calculated on weight, amount of mililiters/pound. Dr. seems to think this is fine and that it will protect him from an excessive increase in growth factors. The growth factors are chemicals in the blood that determine the rate of growth and if there is too much hormone being administered, these factors could be too high. When we go back in July, they will test his blood for those levels (I think they are called GH1 and GH2).

The other doctor/nurse/medical professional woman in the room during the exam was somewhat interested in his weight gain and wanted some feedback from us as to his choices, portions sizes, and activity levels. We were pretty honest in that he doesn't always make great choices (but who does) and that we had just spent a week at an all-you-can-eat place in Mexico. They both encouraged us to encourage him to remain active and restrict sugar, sodas, juices, etc. as much as possible. Okay, we've heard that before, we've tried that before, and we will keep trying, but I kind of felt like I had gotten slapped on the hand.

Still happy with the new doctor, though, and we keep taking it one day, one shot, at a time.