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Cause for Optimism

By Anonymous

I wrote the post below last night, but for some reason (probably exhaustion) forgot to publish it until right now. I was really freaked out after yesterday's phone call with the nurse urging us to come in as soon as possible to get the blood drawn for all of the endocrinologist's requested labs, so that we could get in as soon as possible to see the doctors (which now included a geneticist as well as the endocrinologist). I had been comforted earlier by the pediatrician's lack of urgency over his test results, so I was pretty unsettled by the time I hung up the phone. I was especially scared that someone had finally seen the A1C/glycated hemoglobin test results and that was the instigator for all this panic.

So at 9:15 sharp this morning, Landon and I signed in at the pediatrician's. He was super smiley for all his nurses, I was worried about all the blood draws and finding out the A1C results. It didn't start out looking good. The lab tech was horrified to count up TWENTY-TWO requested labs, requiring FOURTEEN vials of blood from Landon's chubby little arm. He was fairly sure he would have to stick Landon at least twice and was already apologizing to us for it. Luckily, he is a phenomenal phlebotomist and tapped Landon's vein on the first try and had all the vials filled in less than five minutes. Landon didn't even notice and only protested when I restricted his attempted dance moves for the nurse. I was so grateful for the lab tech's skill- Landon inherited my small, shy veins and many an experienced nurse has had to poke him a few times to get blood.

We then met with the pediatrician for a few minutes and FINALLY got the result from the A1C test which was drawn on Tuesday and the result was normal!! This is very good news. It doesn't erase the high results from the prior glucose tests, but it does mean that over the past three months, on average, Landon's glucose levels have been normal. This reintroduces the possiblity that his earlier results were a fluke and moves us even further away from the possibility that he has juvenile diabetes right now. And the reason they were rushing to get the appointments scheduled on the same day was for our convenience and because they knew we were moving in less than 2 months. And we're seeing the geneticist just because his pediatrician still feels something could be underlying all his random issues and she wants to make the best effort at figuring out what that is.

So we left the pediatrician with Landon sporting a super cool band-aid and feeling very chipper and chatty after all his nurses cooed over him and me feeling much relieved. Landon also slept better last night (up briefly at 10:30, and then not again until 5) and I took an over the counter sleeping pill and got NINE hours of sleep. Despite the gray clouds and promise of rain, as I carried a continuously babbling Landon out to the car, I was feeling pretty chipper myself.

Full post as published by Lag Liv on April 04, 2008 (boomark / email).