Another Botox Follow-Up & Braces

(Note to Facebook friends: Please click on the title and it will take you to our Blog site where you can read the whole story but can also dig into the archives and read about and see pictures of our whole adoption from Kazakhstan story!)

Emily had a botox follow-up appointment on Wednesday morning and Tom was able to join us for this one. As usual, we mentally prepped Em for what was going to happen and assured her there would be no shots! She is definitely getting more comfortable going in for her appointments these days. Since this was her daddy's first opportunity to join us for this type of appointment she took charge and showed him the ropes.

She was so full of confidence and even had an extra little spring in her step. When her name was called she marched right ahead of us, followed the nurse back to the exam room and announced to her that there would be "No Shots!" on this fine day. Right away she started asking me for her crayons. (We always take crayons along so she can draw and color on the table paper!) She carried on a pretty good conversation with one of the nurses and then hung out with us in the exam room for a little over an hour before the doctor finally came in.

I'll preface this next paragraph by saying that Emily had an excellent visit and did great the entire time. She responded to all the doctor's requests with calm self-confidence and I was so proud of her. However, I was not so proud of our doctor.

Dr. B came in over an hour after we went into the exam room. She talked very briefly with us and then worked with Emily and checked the range of the flexibility of her ankles. Emily did great and allowed her to stretch and bend her ankles.

The doctor was not impressed that Emily's range of motion didn't seem to be improving. She can barely get her right leg/foot into a 90° bend and her left leg/foot is about 7° away from getting into a 90° bend... I think she called a -7° or something like that. The doctor seemed a little frustrated or baffled or something.

The conversation then just started to get odd. She asked me if we had ever considered serial casting and that is something that we might have to consider. However, if you refer to this post from March you'll see that serial casting is something that we had been told we might need to do all along and then you'll also kindly note that it was Dr. B that told us Emily would NOT be a candidate because she was too "aggressive". Grrrr. So, yes, we had considered serial casting and our physical therapist and I actually pushed Dr. B to consider it because stretching wasn't doing the job.

Dr. B asked me to show her how we've been stretching Emily and proceeded to tell me that we've been doing it all wrong and showed us how we should be doing it. (No problem there. I appreciate constructive criticism, but didn't appreciate the accusing way in which she said it.) She mentioned that she would probably be increasing the dose for the next botox again. And then, she asked me what we knew of Emily's birth history. I told her we really didn't know anything other than the initial diagnoses she was given (and with Russian medical mindset, she had a whole list of diagnoses, most of which are very common in newborns). I told her off the top of my head I didn't remember what any of them were but that they should be in Em's paperwork because I brought it all in with me on our first visit and they made copies. At that point, the conversation got a little more odd.

The doctor asked me if we had ever had an MRI done on Emily's back/spine. (The answer was no.) At that point, she made a comment about her login to the computerized medical records being messed up and she couldn't get into the system. After joking that maybe they were telling her to just go home she left the room.... I assumed she was going to the nurses station to have one of them log in and pull Emily's records. BUT SHE NEVER CAME BACK!

A nurse came back in the room and handed us the wrap-up paperwork that listed our next appointment. Tom and I just looked at each other. Neither of us had any inkling that we were "done" with our conversation... it was almost like the doctor left in mid-thought.

Regardless, we were already not impressed with our visit that day and we were semi-okay with being done. We stopped at the front desk on the way out and set up our next appointment for mid-October and promptly asked if there are other doctors there that do the same thing as Dr. B. Out of only about 4-5 visits, Dr. B has already had 2 major strikes and 1 minor one in my book. I was hoping to give her the benefit of the doubt and chalked it up to having a bad day. However, if this is our batting record, I can't afford for Emily (and us) to keep dealing with "bad days".

We WILL return to Nationwide Children's Hospital (I am highly impressed with NCH) but we WILL NOT be returning to this doctor. It's not a good fit and we have to do what is best for Emily.


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In other news, we heard a couple of days ago that Emily's new braces are ready and we have an appointment scheduled for Monday morning to be introduced to them. I imagine they will do a fitting and tweak them as necessary but I'll post more after that appointment to let you know how it went!