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Julia's
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Friday, October 4

Today, I went to Julia's school to help her celebrate the feast day for St. Francis of Assisi. Traditionally in her school, the kids are allowed to bring their pets, real and "stuffed" in to be blessed. I picked up our Romeo & Juliet at home and brought them to school.

It was chaos! There were birds, reptiles, rabbits, dogs, and cats of every size and description. Once the kids from school came down to the field, it really got crazy. Finally, everyone lined up with their pets to get a blessing from the priest.

     

Tuesday, October 22

Another visit to Children's today. It's been 3 months since our last visit and this was a total non-event. We went to the blood lab first, where they made us wait 45 minutes for a 2-minute procedure. This made us 15 minutes late for our appointment in Rhematology, but they usually keep us waiting at leat that long. Today was no exception.

First they took vital stats (98.8lbs / 44.8kg; 144.1cm / 57"; 97.0°F / 36.5°C; BP 122/53), then we waited a while for Dr. A.W. She came in and did the usual interview. We had little to report, except Julia's sprained ankle, and she's fully recovered from that. Then Dr. A.W. did the full clinical exam, and declared Julia's "stronger than me"! Finally, she looked at Julia's skin and could find no visible trace of a rash, and even her nailbed capillaries seemed better to her since last time.

We admitted that Julia has been less than faithful to using Protopic since our last visit. Dr. A.W. said that since it's for the rash, and that Julia's rash is gone, that it would be okay to discontinue Protopic. Cool!

We also asked about getting Julia a flu shot. It turns out that they do not have any vaccine on hand, so we will need to schedule a time with our regular medical clinic. She also said that it's not that critical since Julia is not on any immune suppressing drugs, like Prednisone or Methotrexate, as she had been in previous years.

Finally, we got blood work paperwork to get blood work done every 2 months, and we can now go to appointments every 4 months! This is great stuff. We scooted out of there to try to get Julia to dance at a reasonable hour, but traffic was a bear and she was 35 minutes late.

Test Date Aldolase CK LDH AST ALT vW F8
1/19/02 5.3 102 198 21 12 193
2/16/02 5.0 202 230 24 11 100
3/16/02 5.5 101 200 21 14 126
4/23/02 5.9 143 466 49 15 115
5/14/02 5.3 86 197 25 20 110
6/29/02 4.0 92 214 27 22 111
7/25/02 4.8 107 232 25 25 103
9/7/02 7.9 99 199 22 15 109
10/22/02 7.8 122 207 24 15 143
Normal Range: 3.0-16.0 4-150 110-295 10-34 6-30 160

Monday, October 28

Julia was feeling generally crummy tonight, with a general listlessness and a sore throat. Hopefully it won't amount to anything.

Tuesday, October 29

Julia woke up feeling lousy, and her throat hust just as bad as last night, if not worse. We decided to keep her home from school today. It was a good thing - it seems that this sore throat thing is going around at school. A couple of other kids got tested for strep throat and it came back negative, so we're not going to take Julia to the doctor for this unless it gets worse or hangs around for a while.

Julia did feel pretty lousy most of the day. However, by evening, she started to feel better and by bedtime, she seemed close to fine.

Wednesday, October 30

We had scheduled Julia to get her annual flu shot today, but with her little illness, we weren't sure it was still a good idea. We called the clinic, and they said that as long as she's feeling well (and she is), and she didn't have a fever (she didn't), it's OK to get the flu shot.

Getting the shot was no problem, except Julia's mom got into silly mode and was mock encouraging the nurse to make it as painful as possible. All three of them had a good laugh, and the nurse said it was the most entertaining flu shot fo the day!

Julia had a little pain at the site of the shot, and she took some Acetomenophen at bedtime, which worked like a charm.

Thursday, October 31

Happy Halloween! Julia is trick-or-treating tonight as "Dr. Julia". It's about as cold as it's been at Halloween here, at least as long as Julia has been going door-to-door. Still, it's always fun for her.

Dr. Julia, future pediatric rheumatologist

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Updated November 6, 2002
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