Sarah had her appointment with the neurologists on Monday. The short story is that they want her to have an MRI, but are willing to wait to see if her delay in gross motor skills will be something that she overcomes on her own. We have a return visit scheduled in six months.
The long version begins with Sarah and I leaving at 11 a.m. I thought it would take 45 to 60 minutes to get there, with an extra 30-minute cushion for getting lost, allowing us to get there 30 minutes before her appointment. The instructions indicated that we needed to be there 30 minutes early in order to fill out all needed paperwork and to register.
Well, we got there in 30 minutes. So with an hour to kill, I wandered up the road to a Target where I found some cute clothes for Sarah (she’s growing out of a lot of her stuff) and some barrettes to keep her hair out of her eyes. With our mini-shopping trip finished, we arrived back at the clinic at the right time.
After the routine little physical by the nurse (she’s 33 inches and 26 pounds), we saw Dr. Nelson first. He examined her reflexes and listened to her heart and checked her muscles. (The global hypotonia – or low muscle tone – that Sarah’s pediatrician was worried about seems to have resolved itself. She has an adequate amount for her age.) He also had her walk between the two of us to evaluate her walking skills.
And then we did a comparison of her skills to find out her average. She is about 9-12 months on gross motor skills, which is the same ranking that Kids on the Move gave Sarah at her 18-month evaluation – it represents a severe delay. The other area in which she is severely delayed is social skills (i.e. talking). Her fine motor skills are just mildly delayed – about 12-15 months.
After that evaluation, Dr. Bennedict came in and discussed where we needed to go from here. (She and Dr. Nelson work together on these cases.)
There are three scenarios that we are watching. If Sarah makes some progress and then levels off, or if Sarah makes progress and then reverts back to earlier skills, then they want Sarah to have an MRI of her brain to see if there is a cause they can identify.
However, if Sarah continues to steadily make progress (continuing to develop but just at a slower pace – kind of like two perpendicular lines), then Drs. Bennedict and Nelson are content to wait it out. We will return in six months for another evaluation.
Part of their consideration for waiting is due to the high cost of an MRI for our family. In six months we will still be in the same fiscal year, and the MRI is unlikely to find anything that they could fix. The MRI would just point to a cause, which would help pinpoint a specific treatment beyond what we already are doing – early intervention physical therapy and speech therapy. They gave me a chart to give me a general idea of what to expect. If Sarah shows any signs of the first two scenarios before the end of the six months, we are to call and schedule an MRI.
Otherwise, the two of us will make another trip in September. I’ll just make sure I don’t leave so early.
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