Man. I feel so thirsty lately. I can’t drink enough water. I feel like the senator guy in that X-Men movie after getting exposed to Magneto’s mutant machine, and he keeps drinking drinking drinking water uncontrollably until he dives into the ocean and becomes a terrifying jellyfish creature and explodes. Freaking Magneto. I was already sympathetic to the mutant cause. Why you gotta hate?
You’re not a mutant, honey, you’re a mermaid. It’s all right. Once your scales start coming in, you won’t be as thirsty.
You know, being a diagnostician in a world with more public magical creatures must be a trip and a half.
“Have you considered that you may not, in fact, actually be a mammal?”
“Okay, I’m going to have to refer you to a specialist. It looks like your tertiary dentition is coming in.”
“I think we need to check for allergic reactions to silver, iron, a few types of wood, garlic, and holy water. That’ll help us rule out some possible causes for this rash. In the mean time I think you should avoid Italian food and holy ground.”
“Have you noticed clusters of birds following you? Were they corvids? Hm, interesting. You ought to come in to the office so we can discuss this further.”
“That itching sensation might be a rash, but I think we ought to give you an MRI and see if you’re about to grow horns.”
So basically, medicine in the Dark Ages, upgraded.
This is literally my dream as a writer and my worst nightmare as a nurse
So I imagine a supernatural version of House where almost every episode someone is like “it’s lycanthropy” and the House character goes “it’s never lycanthropy” except for the one episode it is where the title of the episode is lycanthropy.
for the record i’m never not missing ai yazawa’s nana. it influenced me so much on how i view women’s relationships.
theworldoffostering
I took H to see E’s sleep specialist this week. What a difference it makes to have someone know that you’re a competent parent and listen to your concerns. I mean, I feel like the NP I took him to see knows we are competent too, but basically since she couldn’t check off a box, and say, “It’s this!” she just sent us on our way with no solution or plan.
I took H and Baby with me to the appointment. The office is a solid 75 minute drive without traffic. We sat in the room until nearly an hour after our appointment time. By that point, the boys had both had it, but the doctor and I still managed to exchange several key pieces of information. I verified that H has a difficult time falling asleep and staying asleep. In addition, he often complains during the day that he is “so tired,” and that he frequently says, “Mom, I’m just so wiggly!” when trying to fall asleep. I think the doctor thinks that there’s a strong possibility that he has restless leg syndrome. Generally though, that’s hereditary, and it doesn’t seem like anyone on my side of the family has it. I need to check in with DH’s parents about his side.
The doctor read through the labs that H had drawn a few weeks ago. She said they had not assessed his iron level. I know I asked for his magnesium level to be checked, and I’m nearly positive I asked about iron too. Regardless, it wasn’t checked so he had to have another blood draw just to check for that. This one was a bit more traumatic for him. He didn’t cry, but he was sad about it and very tired by the time we got out of the appointment nearly two hours after our scheduled start time. I bought him a smoothie from McDonalds as a bribe/compensation after it was all over.
But you guys!!! I got the test results this morning. His iron is low! In addition, when the doctor went through his lab work from a few weeks ago, she told me that although technically his hemoglobin and hematocrit levels were normal, they were both on the lowest end of normal it could be. In addition, the hematocrit was low enough that it would be flagged in the children’s hospital system we were seen in this week, even though it wasn’t in our primary care facility. All three of these things point to anemia which is most likely affecting his sleep. Basically, she thinks he has severe chronic sleep deprivation and that is causing the behavioral issues. It totally makes sense to me.
She’s ordering an iron supplement. He will start it tonight. She also ordered a sleep study so we will assess for apnea, low oxygen saturation, and restless leg syndrome. She’s hoping she can still get him in before the end of the year, but we’ll see. It’s going to be tight.
She is also not ruling out a thyroid issue. She is going to rerun both his TSH and his ferritin levels in three months. By then, we will have had the sleepy study done, he’ll have been on the iron supplements for three months, and we can reassess everything.
I cannot tell you how much relief I’m feeling today. Grateful that I followed my gut and kept pursuing. Grateful that we even have a pulse ox machine at home so we could check his O2 level, and that one night of that gave us enough data to get him an appointment with a doctor we know well and who is incredible in her field. Grateful that this seems to be a relatively easy fix.
