Ariana and the Endocrinologist

So we finally got into Aria's appointment yesterday.  It was about an hour and a half appointment.  Most of the time was spent reviewing her entire history with the PA.  After that, we got to talk to the doctor finally.  After spending some time discussing her status, his opinion was to have us give it another 6 months on her Gluten Free diet to see if she would grow.  Since this is obviously what Pamela and I did not want, we asked the doctor what else we could do in the meantime.  We expressed our concern that Ariana had been on a similar diet to our boys over the past 6 months, and while she does eatE a meager amount, it's appropriate for her size.  Pumping her full of calories should make no difference in getting her to magically start growing leaps and bounds (I.e. Like a normal person).  We said that we were worried that we would simply have wasted 6 months only for her to not have grown at all.

Fortunately, the doctor did not push back, and he said we could go ahead and move forward with the full growth hormone test. She'll have to fast for 12 hours before hand, and then wait until her appointment is over before eating. Due to her size, we are able to wake her up at midnight to feed her, but then she'll have to wait until after noon to eat again. This basically involves having Aria hooked up to an IV for 4 hours (that should be interesting…), and she'll get some medication that stimulates her pituitary gland to produce the growth hormone.  Then every 30 minutes, they'll draw a little blood and check hormone levels.  As crumby as this will be when doing it with our daughter, it's what we feel is necessary to try and find out what is going on.  We were able to schedule this appointment for March 7th, so hopefully shortly after that we'll have some next steps.


I plan on going to Toys R Us to get a "special" toy for Ariana to play with at her appointment. Hopefully the newness of it will help distract her. We'll also bring a laptop so we can watch some VeggieTales or Winnie the Pooh. I think the hardest part (beyond the obvious of keeping her from leaving her IV alone), is going to be distracting her from her hunger.

We appreciate all the prayer that everyone has provided for our family.  We feel so blessed to have you all as brothers and sisters in Christ!