Good & Bad

Lorna had her quarterly visit with the pediatric endocrinologist yesterday. There are no useful specialists near us so we have to drive 3 hours to Los Angeles which makes for a really long day. Usually these visits are a whole 5 minutes but this time was a bit longer. The actual doctor isn't the one who does the visit, we always spend most of our time with the doctors in training. The actual endocrinologist only comes in at the end to say hello. This time we met a very nice woman who is in her first year of specialty training. She asked us all kinds of questions about what surgery Lorna had as a baby and if we would do it again given the chance. It seems there is a vocal group who feels the non-life threatening surgery usually done on infant girls with this condition shouldn't be done until the teen years. They feel these girls should be able to decide for themselves. Funny thing is, this has to be done once you reach puberty so I don't understand what the issue is. The new techniques now mean it's a one time thing, unlike Lorna's which will be have to be completed with a second surgery in the next few months.

The good news is that the labs look great, the bad news is that she hasn't grown any in the last 4 months. The doctors feel that she won't be growing much more. They said she may gain 1/2 inch over the next few years but they don't expect her to hit 5 feet. We already knew her bones had started fusing early but we didn't realize she was this far off in bone age. They were concerned but I didn't get the impression that there is anything they can do about it. She took the news really well and said that she would just have to get small horses to ride.