First Doctor's Visit

Today Kaiden has his first visit with our pediatrician. Our adoption agency recommends that we visit a physician that has extensive experience with international adoption. Both of the doctors recommended are each 1 hour away. We are opting to use the girls' current pediatrician and see how things go. We have been very happy with this practice for almost 9 years now and one of the doctors is well known throughout the country.

The visit went relatively smooth. We were there for over an hour. He was a level 5 visit. None of the girls' visits have ever been over a level 3! Somethings we expected and somethings were a surprise to us. One surprise but easily dealt with was that he had an ear infection in his left ear. That is also the side of his head that is flat from him lying on it. We got a prescription for the 'pink stuff' to take care of that.

He'll need a chest x-ray to look at his lungs and rib cage. He has a cough (we are using a cool mist humidifier) and green runny nose. If it's a sinus infection, the penicillin will take care of that too. His rib cage is also malformed. It kind of rolls up at the bottom. I didn't notice that until we were on the plane ride home and he was laying on my lap on his side.

The one thing we knew of because it was his listed special need was that he'll need to see a pediatric opthamologist for his left eye. I received 3 separate recommendations for Dr. O'Malley and that is also who our pediatrician recommended as well.

Because of being in an orphanage, he is developmentally delayed. He is almost 18 months old and he's at about what a 4 month old can do. But in just the month that we have had him, he already is improving his neck control. He's still a weeble wobble but he's making slow progress. We are supposed to give him as much tummy time as he'll tolerate and keep turning his head so he'll stay off of the left side. This means he needs to see the pediatric neurologist. We can ask him about a helmet to fix the shape of his head but it might be too late. It might be fully formed already but we can ask.

The neurologist will order PT & OT (and eventually speech) therapy so we can set that up now. We actually have his appointment for that assessment set up before we see the neurologist so we can take the results with us. He should qualify for the MISD's Early On intervention program for these services. When I was doing in-home daycare, I had 2 girls that received these services. Both of their parents were happy with the programs. One thing for sure is that our state ranks very poorly in being prepared to deal with gifted children but they have wonderful services for special needs children.

Next is the ENT. He has a tongue tie which maybe part of why he refuses solid foods. We could wait to deal with this until later since he has so many other things going on but he needs a hearing screening. It's the same doctor for both so we'll address that right away too.

Since we don't know if his immunizations that he received in China were any good, we opted to just start from scratch. He received a TB test which was one poke in the arm. Then he received 3 shots in the legs. He needed one more but since we was already being poked and we only live 1 mile away, he'll go back in 2 weeks to get the other one. He'll go back to see the pediatrician in 2 months for his next shots and to follow up with all of his specialist visits.

I took the first available appointment for all of his physicians and they are still spread out over the next 2 - 6 weeks. Some of the doctors are extremely difficult to get in with. I'm taking that as a good sign that they will be excellent.