Wednesday, March 18, 2015

James' Five-Year Well-Check.

My biggest boy, his daddy, and I headed to the doctor's office for a well-check yesterday. {Side note: I am raising a germaphobe just like myself. I was wearing a maxi skirt and James told me I might want to re-think my outfit so it wouldn't drag on the ground and I'd get all those germs. Lol!} He wanted to know if he was getting any shots before we went and was a little nervous about that, but otherwise he's pretty much an old pro at the doctor's office. Thankfully, he doesn't go NEARLY as often as he used to. I think in our almost two years of living here he has only been to this practice three times including yesterday! Hallelujah!

We arrived on time and waited FOREVER. The parking lot was SO full. He was pretty antsy in the waiting room, but well-behaved for sure!

They weighed him and measured him and he's a pretty average guy. He was 44 inches (50th percentile) and 44 pounds (58th percentile). His blood pressure was 100/60 and his BMI is in the 67th percentile. He was actually shorter than the doctor expected him to be (he did have on a larger shirt - see yesterday's picture -so I think he just looked longer than that) and she asked the nurse if she was SURE. He is officially tall enough to ride Space Mountain in the Magic Kingdom and Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom. I'm not sure if you're aware, but that is a mighty big deal.

We talked about his asthma - he has been OFF ALL MEDICINE for over a year! Praise Jesus! - and she's happy that he's doing well. He will have to have a pulmonary function test soon just to check. He had this done at 3.5 years old just to give a baseline, but it wasn't official because he was really too young to do it. 

He is also being referred to an allergist in town to RECHECK for food allergies. We could use some prayers on this one. We are PRAYING that he has outgrown all food allergies! His chances are less than 10%, but we've also easily avoided another reaction in three years and that's pretty great. {I say easily...those that care for him sometimes may not agree. I am a STICKLER for what he puts in his mouth and for reading a food label.} Anyway, we have our fingers crossed that skin tests and RAST (radioallergosorbent - the blood test) tests BOTH come back negative for food allergies. {He has passed a RAST before, but failed the skin test twice.} They'll do the PFT test at the same appointment.

I also have to make him an appointment with an eye doctor soon. This is what I alluded to last week. I didn't mean to cause panic, but I use this as my journaling/documentation for all of our "stuff" and I cannot tell you how many times I've come back to look at WHEN something occurred on here. NOTHING major at all, I didn't mean to be vague about it, I just wanted confirmation. A little over a year ago it was suggested to us that James might have some problems seeing colors. I can't remember if YaYa said something about it or if it was Anna. Anyway, we were at the lake and we pulled up some color blindness tests online and they weren't great, but he passed them. A few times since then we've had some "hmmm" moments with him about colors. Fast forward to last week. His teacher walked him out to my car {this is a rare occurrence because I pick up on the side of the building where Will sits and not where James sits so I almost never see James' teachers}. She said they'd been doing some color sorting and talking about rainbows for St. Patrick's Day and James was having some trouble differentiating between blue and purple. She said she thought he was just being lazy at first and lumping them all together and then she realized he couldn't distinguish between the two colors. His other teacher told her that she'd noticed something earlier in the year, but just hadn't said anything. A little history for you here is that I am a carrier for the color blindness gene. My dad is color blind so it is an inherited family trait. Because I'm a carrier, our boys have a 50% chance of being color blind and it looks like James got landed with that one, too. Poor kiddo. I mentioned it at his doctor's appointment and she told me to make an appointment to see an eye doctor because they'd be the one to handle it. She also wanted him to be seen before he's 7 anyway. His days without glasses are numbered. Eddie and I have TERRIBLE vision. CLEARLY, color-blindness is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it will be something that we'll have to address at school each year. SO far, the only color we've determined he has trouble with is blue, but that doesn't mean he has problems with green and red as well. He knows what being color blind means because there's been some talk of it over the years, so we can't decide if he TRULY cannot see those colors, or if he's just saying he can't because he thinks that WE think he can't {and also the novelty of it...my little hypochondriac has something wrong with him and that's exciting! lol!}. Every time we've talked about color blindness I see Donkey from Shrek saying, "Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns. This would be so much easier if I wasn't COLOR BLIND!"

Overall it was a GREAT check-up. I love the questions that they come up with to ask to be sure kids are growing and learning what they should. Today they asked him what he'd do if someone knocked on the door and we weren't able to answer it, if someone called and he was home alone (seriously?), whether he buckles up, if he wears his bike helmet, and if he eats lots of fruits and veggies. I called him OUT on that last one and he told Dr. D that he DOES like vegetables - potatoes! She laughed at him. :) And she told him to work on that. We are proud that James is a big, healthy five year old boy. I had a flashback to carrying my boy in in his infant seat today. Five years have FLOWN by.

 {I remembered to ask about measles while I was there. I thought about MMR after the Disneyland measles outbreak and she said that Will - and other children - are fine because they've started MMR, but if we were to go somewhere where there are cases of measles then she'd go ahead and give him another booster. Adults are fine because generally most of us still have immunity. And on ANOTHER side note, Eddie, Anna, and I all got whooping cough in the summer of 2006 and adults DO need tDap boosters every ten years. She said often healthcare providers want to just give you tetanus, but to find someone else if they won't offer you the tDap booster. Interesting...Whooping cough was the worst illness I've ever had. I didn't feel bad, but HOLY MOLY it was miserable.}

1 comment:

Anna Catherine said...

I got my shot! Whooping cough was the worst! I couldn't imagine a child or baby suffering through that!