happy snaps

Sorry about the delay!

Special services have been in contact with us. It is going to take about 8 weeks until they can assess the little man. They tried to push us into another speech group but I insisted they do an assessment.

I took him to a speech pathologist. He needs a ENT referral to make sure he has the ability to make the sounds needed for talking. We are in the process of this.

He has now begun full toilet training. Day 1 of training today, 5 hits and 3 misses.

special services

Ethan has had a paediatrician and health nurse assessment over the last couple of weeks. He has grown a little with height and weight. He is tiny compared with other three year old boys, but more importantly he is still taller than Adele! (Not sure for how long, 0.3cm between them).

It has been decided that he needs a pretty intense year developmentally. Both the health nurse and paediatrician have referred us to Victoria Special Services. This service offers a range of specialties from speech pathology, physiotherapy, special kinder programs etc. We now have to wait for the assessment, this could take up to 6 months! The assessment itself is a couple of hours. In the meantime we were advised to pay for private speech therapy.

He needs to have his hearing tested again (As a package for special services). The earliest this can get done is in May. He had it tested on 3rd April, 2003 and it was good, so we can't imagine it being any worse than that! The recent ear infection has gone and his ear drum looks good.

His hair is growing back fast. We are still not sure of the colour. Sometimes it looks pretty blonde and fair and sometimes it looks ginger. It is pretty soft and fluffy unless I spike it with gel!

He is showing signs of toilet training. We have caught a couple of wees on the toilet. Pretty exciting for all involved.

I have a record of Ethan's hospital admissions. Here are some stats...
I'm not too sure how many days have been spent at the GP, health nurse, paediatrician, cardiologists, oncologists etc, but he has had 67 hospital admissions, a total of 280 days, 10 of those days have been spent in intensive care...and he has just turned 3!

HAPPY HEART KIDS DAY, I hope you have all bought some stickers for the cause!

I will post some photos later tonight for those who want to see a recent snap.
Cheers, Jo

ear infection

Ethan has had a snotty nose and has been chesty for over a week now. This usually causes concern about more asthma. We have been lucky that his asthma care plan has worked. He has been having ventolin every four hours. The snot he was producing was running like a tap. He was even getting conjuctivitis. Nothing too concerning, this is quite normal when he has a bug.

But what is normal. On Saturday we couldn't see in Ethan's ear. He had huge amounts of pus oozing from it. A visit to the doctor diagnosed acute otitis media (an ear infection). The pus and fluid produced in the middle ear caused a lot of pressure and ruptured the eardrum allowing it to drain into the ear canal. He has been commenced on oral antibiotics and ear drops that contain an antibiotic and a steroid for anti inflammatory purposes. They took a swab and has a review next week.

The doctor was asking about pain. It usually has fair bit of pain associated with it. I remembered he let out a pretty loud squeal while shopping. He pulled at his ear (which is a habit of his at the best of times) and had some blood in his mouth. As he was eating at the time, I thought he had bitten his tongue!

cardiac review

Ethan had the long awaited cardiac appointment yesterday...

After his cardiac catheter in December Dr Jim felt they would push on and close his VSD and increase the blood to his lungs by changing the conduit, but after many discussions with the surgeons they have decided not to put him through surgery just yet. The surgeons believe they can't close the VSD safely at the moment. They also believe the blood flow to his lungs is adequate enough to get by, so they don't want to change the conduit either. They would prefer to hold off and hopefully do it all together in one go at a later stage.

We spoke to Dr Jim about Ethan's asthma being pretty active and unfortunately kids with his type of cardiac condition have asthma. We were given another couple of ventolin scripts!

His weight is down since December but he has grown a couple of centimeters. Dr Jim isn't concerneed, it is quite normal and 3 year olds don't put on a lot of weight.

Next cardiac review is in 4 months. Oncology review coming up on the 22nd Feb.