Pediatric Specialties Clinic

On Friday Asa had an appointment with a metabolic genetics specialist at a hospital in town. Just knowing he was seeing a metabolic geneticist made me nervous. Then I received their form letter instructing me we would see a genetics counselor, med students, the specialist himself, and that bringing family pictures along would be helpful in looking for traits that might make any number of disorders more easily identifiable. Thankfully, we had our little weight check with Dr. K before the specialist appointment and she reaffirmed that our visit was NOT a big deal. That is the form letter they send to everyone. Our appointment was for the specialist who has been consulting on Asa's failure to thrive lab work ups to see our little patient for himself before declaring he is fine. Whew.

It was obvious the staff are well trained in working with children; it WAS the pediatric specialties clinic at the hospital, after all. During his blood pressure check, the nurse blew bubbles to distract him and everyone had a sweet and engaging demeanor with him. A highlight was that the scale in the clinic said Asa was 17 lbs. 11.9 oz! I know scales can vary by even up to a pound, but that weight suggests Asa is maintaining his rate of gaining 5-6 oz. per week. WOO HOO!

We visited with the genetics counselor first. She drew a little family tree in Asa's file as we talked and went through our family history. The good news is that our families are blessed with great health and there was no information there that needed to be pursued as a possible cause of Asa's funky lab work. As we talked, just as has suspected for quite some time now, the consensus kept coming back to Asa's body just taking its time getting levels back to normal. And to be fair, the last labs (urine organic acids... although the serum amino acids came back NORMAL so that's a GREAT sign) that came back were conducted about a month after Asa's tongue tie was fixed, and it took 3 more weeks to get results back. That info was outdated before we even got the results! Now it's been over 6 MORE weeks.

Next the actual metabolic geneticist came in with a med student from Italy. We talked a little more about Asa's history and the events that precipitated the lab work being completed in the first place. He played with Asa while he evaluated him and again said Asa seems healthy now and is obviously eating and gaining much more appropriately. :) He ordered a repeat of the lab work (oh, joy!), but we anticipated that and EVERYONE anticipates the lab work ALL returning normal this time. Please pray with us that it does!

The clinic is aware we are moving, and it takes several weeks to receive some of the test results anyway. They suggested I call them when we are settled in Ohio. We're hoping for an "everything's great!" report. But if there IS more information to pursue as a result of these tests, they'll refer us to someone in Ohio to pick up Asa's case and get to the bottom of anything that is still abnormal.

I am very thankful for the doctors' kindness to Asa and me and to hear from such a learned person what we have been seeing all spring--Asa is doing GREAT! The lab work was not so fun to collect, as Asa is old enough now to remember the last rounds (in Feb. and March) and anticipate what was going to happen (i.e. lots of crying and trying to fight off the lab techs). But it is DONE. An added bonus was the specialist inquiring about Asa's name and getting to share about King Asa in the OT! I am amazed and humbled how something as "simple" as Asa's name has provided us countless opportunities to tell people about God!