Monday, March 31, 2008

Orthopedic follow-up

Rough morning.. Or I guess rough night into the morning. Last night Jacob had a very difficult night. It wasn't from the knee pain, but I think from the anxiety of the upcoming day. We slept last night for a bout 1 hour total! Jacob had insomnia! He just couldn't fall asleep until after five this morning! We had leave for Boston at 7:00AM. Some how we made it with time to spare. We went into the orthopedic to have his knee looked at. The orthopedic doctor said that he was healing well. The swelling today actually looked closer to the pre-surfery swelling. His movement of the joint is still very limited. The doctor said the lab report was conclusive to this being only the Juvenile arthritis. I asked him why it looked so strange. He felt as though the arthritis resembled more of something you would see in an older person. Fortuately, the cartilage and bone looked very good. There was just so much excess growth and inflammation of the synovial membrane. I mentioned if he thought that we would have to be very aggressive towards treating this, he said more than likely. The rheumatologist would be able to tell us more next week. The doctor also said that the pathologists were analizing the tissue further for minor possibilities.

After the doctor's visit we decided to stop in school. Jacob was so nervous to go in there. One of the biggest things you read about a child going through a chronic illness, is that they don't want to be different. I was able to get him into the office and the secretary had his teacher and class come into the office to say welcome back. The class was so sweet. They said that they have been missing him and would help him when he came back. The plan is to start him back into school tomorrow. I think we may try to do only half days for the week. Jacob is still a little unsteady and tires easily. I am hoping that he can manage a few hours and have enough focus to get through the lessons. We will see tomorrow.

For now I am hoping he can sleep well. He refused to nap today. I on the otherhand just woke from a 1 1/2 hour nap.
He has to fall asleep tonight I don't know how at 9 he can skip a whole night's sleep!

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