To my sweet baby girl,
The past few weeks you’ve been pretty obsessive about your “owwies”. This includes pointing them out on both me and you, as well as scratching anything that even comes close to resembling a scab…again, on both me and you. Right now you have two scars on your left leg from scratching said scabs off multiple times. Every day, it seems like you manage to get a new owwie, but I’ve got to say, I am really glad that you are starting to be able to express when you have a hurt.
Like I said in the previous post, the past year has been really rough when it comes to what the doctors have termed “daycare-itis”. I’m really not kidding when I say that you’ve been sick from May of 2009 to May of 2010. It’s been one respiratory illness after another, with a few stomach viruses (during which you puked all over Mama…another story for another time) thrown in for good measure. Needless to say, you weren’t able to express when you didn’t feel good, which left the guessing game up to, you guessed it, Mommy and Daddy. Talk about TOUGH. “Maybe she has an earache. Do you think she has an earache?” “Shall we call the doctor again?” “Knock on wood quick because right now her nose isn’t running and her chest isn’t clogged with mucus!” “Oh wait, I spoke too soon.” Rough. Guessing is ROUGH.
So, now you can start to tell me when you don’t feel good or have an owwie, which makes me happy because Baby Girl, you were recently diagnosed with Juvenile Inflammatory Arthritis (JIA), also known as Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA). What we thought was a swollen knee due to your propensity for exploration and rough play and likely knee tweak, we were told was not. Instead, our clinical diagnosis from both the pediatric orthopedist and pediatric rheumatologist was JIA. I’m going to tell you now Ani, it broke our hearts to hear this. I cried A LOT (poor Dr. Doyle) and Daddy processed this information a lot (he’s a processor – you’ll see when you’re older).
Now let’s be clear. You’ve been diagnosed with Pauciarticular JIA, which as Daddy put it, is not the best diagnosis, but it’s not the worst either. You also tested positive on the ANA blood test, which as I understand, means that you have a higher propensity to have optic nerve inflammation. Again, not great. BUT. With proper and regular care from both your pediatric rheumatologist and pediatric ophthalmologist and medication, your prognosis is for a perfectly normal childhood. This makes me happy because I want nothing more than a NORMAL childhood for you.
Mommy and Daddy will be giving you two shots once a week for the medication that will help keep your childhood normal. I only mention this because when you get older, I want you to know how extremely difficult it was for Daddy and me to do anything that knowingly hurts you, even if its only for a few seconds, even if it’s only to make you ultimately feel better. Baby, we were crying right along with you. I hated then, and hate now, thinking that you might be even the slightest bit confused about why we would do something that causes you pain. Please know throughout your life, because I’m sure at many different points you’ll think that we’re inflicting pain on purpose, that we would never do anything to intentionally hurt you. We want what is ultimately best for you and sometimes that seems to be masked in brief moments of pain, like it is with these shots.
At some point down the road, you might ask if we second guessed the diagnosis and the treatment we are giving you. Of course we did. You couldn’t, and to some extent, still can’t express the kind of pain you’re in, so all we (and your doctors) had/have to go on was observation and testing. Like I said, guessing is ROUGH.
So you see Ani, I’m happy that you are able to start expressing when you have an owwie, even though most of the time, it’s just a scrape on a knee, leg or hand. It helps Mommy and Daddy know that they are doing the best that they can for you and THAT is the ONLY thing we want.
Love you Baby Girl.
Mommy
Sweetness.
