Joint Injections Part Deux

Today Siobhan and I headed up to Primary Children's Medical Center for her joint injection. I hate this part. Carson was supposed to come up with us but he spiked a fever last night and it was still hanging on this morning, so this being flu season, we thought it was better for everyone involved if he stayed home with the kiddos. So it was just mommy and Siobhan for a little girl time. We had to leave really early in the morning because she was the first one on the schedule. As early of a morning as it was, it worked out for the best and I think that i want to it that early every time. Because she had to go completely under, Siobhan wasn't allowed to have anything to eat after midnight and nothing to drink after 6 am. So getting it all over with early was nice so Siobhan could eat while it was still breakfast time.

After getting all checked in, they took us back to pre-op were all of Siobhan's vitals were taken and she was declared to be in good health. That was relief since Siobhan spent almost all of last week really sick (she missed four days of school!). We also met with the childlife specialist who walked Siobhan through the whole process and let her pick a flavor for the anesthesia. I was just reading my last post about that (you can read it here). Last time, Siobhan loved every flavor last time and couldn't decided. This time around, with all of the same flavors at her disposal, she only liked three of them! Strawberry, watermelon and one that I can't remember. For the record, they have yet to take our suggestion from last time to add a bacon flavor! They also had a ipad for her play Angry Birds on while she waited. It was awesome!

They even held the ipad up for her to play on while she was falling asleep!

 She looks so much bigger than last time!

Fast asleep!

Dr. I was very happy with how everything went! Side bar, we love Dr. I, she's awesome! Siobhan had a harder time coming out the anesthesia than last time. She was very dizzy and it took a while to get over that.

When she's older, she's going to be really mad at me for posting some of these pictures. Oh well. She was also very excited to have a bag of cheetos when all was said and done. I don't let cheetos in the house because I hate them with passion that very people will understand. So it was a big treat along with her own can of root beer and a root beer slurpee.

All in all, I think the injection was successful. We'll know more over the course of the next few weeks if they actually did what they need to do. Fingers crossed that we've bought ourselves of few months of no meds and no worries!

 Joint injections part 2-January 2013

 Joint injections part 1 August 2011

I don't know if you can really tell, but this girl has grown up a lot in the last year and a half!

P.S. She's my hero!

JIA Update

Last we checked in with Siobhan and her friend JIA, she was in remission with medication. Back in August, the methotrexate, that she gets by shot, was causing come damage to her liver so the Doctor had us take her off the meds completely!! That was happy! So we began life with no medication at all and just managing her Arthritis with a gluten free diet and lots of positive vibes.

Siobhan had her regular check up with Dr. Inman on November 15 and was declared in full clinical remission with no meds! That's huge and exciting!

Then her birthday and Thanksgiving hit. I don't know if it's related or not, but we let her have regular gluten filled cake for her birthday and a Thanksgiving dinner that was bursting with gluten (gasp!! Mother of the year!). The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Siobhan came up in the morning with a very swollen, painful and stiff right knee. :( Such a bummer!!! Back on meds. Not the methotraxate but a daily anti-inflammatory called meloxicam. Through discussion with her pediatrician (who Siobhan coincidentally had a well check with) and emails with D. Inman the decision was made to go for several weeks on the meloxicam and see where that got us.

By Monday of this week there was no improvement! So six weeks of pain, stiffness and swelling....great. So we got into see Dr. Inman yesterday and we were told that we basically had two options. 1) back on weekly methotrexate injections which could possibly not work (at least not very quickley) and damage her liver again. And by the way, do you like getting shots once a week??? 2) Go for the big time and do the joint injection which she's had once before in August 2011. You can read about it here and here. Through discussion with the Dr. and Siobhan, we decided to go with option 2. It's a more drastic option but I don't want to spend months and months giving her shots every week and then end up doing the injection anyway-who wants that?? So on Monday Jan 14th, we will head up Primary Children's Hospital for another round of injections in her right knee.

Oddly enough, her right knee has never been the one we were worried about. Her left knee was the one that first clued us into the fact that something might be wrong back in 2011 and by all accounts, her right knee was never as bad as the left. She didn't even need the injection in her right knee the first time around. That's all changed now. Oh well. Siobhan is very happy though that she gets to take two days off of school and that she'll be asleep through the whole thing. The little things, right?