A Busy Bee and the Rheumatologist

Today is a very hectic day. After I dropped Romania at the bus stop, I came home to drop Holland with my mom and take Egypt to her rheumatology appointment. Holland has a ceramics class on Thursdays, so my mom took him there and I drove to Emanuel for Egypt's appointment. After lunch, I have Holland's annual review IEP meeting, pick up Romania, then drive up to Portland for another doctor's appointment at 5. I'm tired just typing that all!

Egypt's rheumatologist said that she has two more joints affected. He checks the affected joint each appointment, but also checks non-affected, because it can happen fairly quickly. He noticed a slight deviation in her jaw. He measured how far she can open her mouth - which was good - but her jaw deviates to the left. There is no swelling so far, but we have to come back in 2 months (instead of 3) to check it again. I went to an information meeting one time and saw the horrible things that arthritis in the jaw could do to a person's face. I'm totally freaked out by that. She also has a thumb affected. He actually thinks it may have been affected before and he didn't see it. But the way it moves makes him think that it's not a recently affected joint. So we are now looking at the possibility of polyarticular JRA because of the smaller joints involved. She was diagnosed with pauciarticular JRA because of the larger joint and only being one. If a child has bigger joints involved, it's more likely that it will stay pauciarticular. But now that she has smaller joints affected, the diagnoses has changed.

We also have to look into getting lifts for her shoes. Her right leg is growing faster and each time we go in, there is a bigger discrepancy in the difference of length. Now there is over a centimeter. He's afraid if we don't address this, she will continue to keep her right leg bent to compensate for the length difference.