Neurology follow-up day
This day last year we drove to Ann Arbor to begin waiting out for Evan’s arrival (it was his due date) and had no clue if we would return home as two or three. Today we drove to Ann Arbor for follow-up development and neurology appointments. What an evolution of a year. Can’t imagine having one more eventful and don’t think I would want another one like it either! The fog is lifting… a day at a time…
The developmental follow up is for the TECS study. We signed Evan up for a number of studies when he was born. Apparently now tho a developmental evaluation at 1 year is standard of care at UofM and that is great. He proved to be pretty much where we thought he was – delayed in gross motor, delayed in “self care” (being able to feed himself etc.), and delayed a bit in speech. The speech part was new, hadn’t been mentioned to us before, but I think the feeding has a correlation to speech since it uses the same muscles. Once he figures out how to eat I bet his speech improves a lot more. They said for us to watch it and if by 18 mo he isn’t saying things to consider speech therapy. Meh I’m not too worried again considering I think it is connected to feeding. He’ll get there. We go back for the TECS study re-evaluation when he is 3.
We also had a follow-up with his neurologist Dr. Leiber because Evan had at least 1 stroke and seizures last August. He didn’t find anything remarkable and agreed with our earlier findings but we will visit him again in a year. Evan had his head measured and it was basically at the 100th percentile. The growth curve for his head is crazy steep. We of course know he has a big noggin considering it is difficult getting 2T shirts over it. The Dr. checked our heads just for good measure and turns out that dad’s head is larger than the average. (ok mom’s is too but not as much as dad). So buddy will be stuck with a big head – full of big brains too.
Fortunately and unfortunately we were able to see our friends the Wilson family. Mia was recently admitted as she just isn’t feeling like herself lately. Prayers that they either figure it out or that she gets better and gets out of the hospital and home soon! And funny timing that another friend Aly was there for her 3 yr assessment the day before. If we could only coordinate better next time. Well… it does look like Mia and Evan will both have their Fontans next summer, so who knows. It is nice to have familiar faces in the hospital. Oh and we saw a sign for the Evan Newport Hope Award and it made us smile. Scott met and talked with us a while after Evan’s birth and there is no doubt he is passionate.
After all the hospital bidness we went to Toys R Us and returned what I had originally bought for Evan (the Tek Nek pony – his legs are too fat! and the 1 song was lame-o) and got something else instead. Mama has some hope it will inspire to keep working on his PT! We also bought some extra receiving blankets seeing as he had 2 spitups, 4 pukes, and 3 outfit changes during the day. We were all out of our extra supplies and needed some backup just in case. We also ran to the party store to get the remaining party supplies for Saturday. The VanSolkema family bought out all of the design in Kalamazoo so we had to drive to Ann Arbor just to get anything. 😉 We’ll need to plan better next year. (Momma VanSolkema works at Pfizer too and had twin boys on the 17th, so with birthdays only 4 days apart there will always be a lot of the same for us too. Actually, there were a lot of boys born last year so we get ideas from everyone else and make our party that much more awesome 😎 There are perks for being last!)
Evan slept all the way home and then some. Poor guy was pooped. Hopefully uninterrupted sleep tonight. Whoo hoo! We rounded out the day watching some Dark Night, going for a walk with the present Dadda bought, and watering the flowers. A truly lovely day.
BTW I think this is the fastest we have ever done something and posted it. I’m pretty proud of us for that. 🙂 I do have lots more photos to share tho and hopefully I can make another post soon.
