Neurology

This morning Kaiden has his appointment with the neurologist. We saw Dr. Allarakiah with St. John's. He is well known in this area so we felt very comfortable with seeing him. I was planning to go alone but Pete had to work late tonight so he came with me. I'm glad he did. I thought this was going to be an uneventful appointment - just routine. There was a lot of information to process. Honestly, although we didn't say it to each other, we weren't expecting much out of this appointment. We both thought Kaiden was delayed from neglect in the orphanage and with time he'd just catch up. Well, we were wrong. But we don't have any clear answers yet. More tests and appointments are needed.

Dr. Allarakiah was very surprised that Kaiden is so delayed. He too confirmed that Kaiden is at around a 2 - 4 month old developmentally. Closer to 2 months but he said 4 months because he can roll over both ways. He said about halfway through the appointment that if his delays were due solely to being in an orphanage, that at least his gross motor skills would be further along. He'd expect him to be at least sitting up and pulling himself up.

Without any history, pregnancy, birth, or his own family medical history, Dr. Allarakhia said that we have to begin by ruling out a number of possibilities. In order to do this, he ordered a Brain MRI with sedation (scheduled for June 4) , EEG (still trying to schedule), and urinalysis (we did this riht away today). He referred us to Dr. Bawles, Genetics, for a few different blood tests that only she would have access to. She is also a professor of pediatrics. I couldn't get an appointment to see her until the end of July. He wants a complete metabolic work-up and a test to rule out Rett's Syndrome. We don' think he has Rett's but we don't know what his state of health was like before we got him, so we'll do the test just to be sure. Boys with Rett's rarely survive, but he said they are seeing more and more boys with it. He said Kaiden could have any number of other syndroms, but not likely because his facial features appear to be normal. He said Kaiden could also have something along the autism spectrum, but he wasn't so sure about that either.

So all in all, a lot of information to process, more than I expected. And more tests for poor Kaiden.