let's get small

[kirkcudbright]

Last Monday, we had a consultation with an endocrinologist at Children's Hospital, to make sure nothing was medically wrong with Kylie's growth. She's always been at the 3rd percentile in height and weight - always growing, but never catching up to her peers.

We got there at 2:00 for a 2:30 appointment, and got the paperwork finished just in time for her appointment. ...And waited...and waited...and watched Spongebob with the sound mercifully turned off...and waited some more. And it was 4:30 before they actually saw us. The small upside is that, even though they were running way behind, they didn't try to catch up at our expense. We had a nice long consult with the doctor, and Kylie got poked and prodded (inspected, detected, neglected, and selected), and asked all manner of (to her) bizarre questions ("Has your sense of smell changed recently?). Then they sent us down the hall to X-ray her wrist (to check the state of the growth plates, and estimate bone age [11]), and take about two dozen blood samples. And so it was 7:00 before we were out of there.

So the upshot is, it took five hours and a week to determine that Kylie is just small. Based on the results of a three-month followup visit, we may be considering growth hormones. Or she may just grow on her own.

Comments

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

"Just small" means that nothing seems to be wrong with Kylie, right? If so, I'm glad to hear that.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Kylie is an amazing girl. Size matters not.

(sez I at my towering 60" height. It hasn't slowed me down. And it certainly doesn't seem to be slowing her down either.)

[kirkcudbright.livejournal.com]

When Kylie was around 2, the Early Intervention nurse showed us the results of a then-recent long-term study of extremely low-birth-weight preemies (under 1.5 Kg - Kylie was 590g). They typically caught up to their peers by around 4 years. The ones who hadn't caught up by the end of the study period (8 years) generally had one of two things going on - neurological damage (not the case here), or "sub-normal maternal height". In other words, if the mother's short, the kid may be short too.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Well, then, there you go. Makes sense.

Though, to be fair, I had to stop for a minute and think, 'is F short?'. Cause she isn't to me. She projects way, way bigger. Or, should I say, way way more formidable.

Maybe it's her amazing hair that knocks me out every time.

;-D

[kirkcudbright.livejournal.com]

"She's actual size, but she seems much bigger to me." When I met her, she claimed to be four-eleven-and-three-quarters. But I think that's just because it sounds cooler than five-foot-nothing.

FINDINGS: According to the standards of Greulich and Pyle, patient corresponds to a bone age of 11 years. Chronological age is 12 years and one month. One standard deviation for the age is about 10 months.

Normal laboratory evaluation with borderline IGF-1 which could be secondary to poor nutritional intake. Bone age consistent with constitutional delay. However, predicted height only 147 cm (-2.86 SDS) placing Kylie in the group of children who are approve[sic] for growth hormone use in short stature. IGFBP3 levels still pending.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

I find it amusing that those of more petite stature *use* those 1/4 inches, while I've heard folks say 'I'm 5'10, 5'11, something like that'. Yeah, they can say that.

I used to be shy about being 5-foot-nothing. But I grew out of it. ;-)