Thursday, February 24, 2005

Take a deep breath

We went to the hematologist today.

We don't have an answer yet; we need to repeat the blood tests in two weeks.

The good news is that it looks like these are not dire issues that require immediate attention and that all the possibilities are most likely not of great concern in the long term.

There are two things we are looking at now... That strange breast milk jaundice and the possibility that Josef is transitioning out of fetal blood supply into mature blood supply and we just caught him at a cross hairs.

The plan is to test again and see if the levels we would expect to go up actually go up (hematocrit and hemoglobin) and those we would expect to go down actually go down (bilirubin and reticulocytes).

We had a fabulous experience and had a great doctor that took the time to answer questions and show me references and standard values of expected lab results. My Pediatrician was wonderful too; she took the time to call us about 5 times over two days to make sure we were not too worried about our appointment for Squink.
(Nettie - remember that bedside manner is vitally important, especially when they try to teach it out of you in medical school!).

Now if we don't get any viable results from these tests, we go on to another test... but outcomes and possibilities look good.

Office visit basics:
21 3/4 inches long
15 inch head circumference
11 pounds and 12.4 ounces weight (5.345 Kg)

2 comments:

Nettie said...

I know it stinks not knowing what exactly is wrong, but I'm glad the preliminary stuff looks good. As for bedside manners,I've had enough plenty experience with both good and bad ones. I hope I'll be one of the good ones.

Sarah said...

Blair,

This is the first time I've wandered around your blog a bit. What a sweet baby boy! Sorry he's worrying you -- I really hope it turns out to be nothing.