Week 11 Blog 2

As I sit here at my computer I am racking my brain trying to figure out what to blog about. Ummmm....still nothing!

Nope nothing yet!!!!!


Well I'm 10 minutes in and still nothing.....I think I will switch out my laundry and see what I think about while folding the dry clothes and go from there.

I finally got it...I came up with this because I was folding my littlest guys jeans. So my youngest son is 8 but still wears a size 5, and we still have to adjust the waistband smaller so he can wear them without them falling down around his knees. However, I have to hang them to dry so the length will stay the way it is because if they shrink at all they will be a little short.We were so excited when we went school shopping and he could actually wear a size 5 jeans and a 5/6 shirt. He is little I know but we are very proud of his growth over the last 10 months or so. He is now a whopping 45 pounds but up until the last few months he weighed a mere 34 pounds. The poor little guy didn't even register on the growth chart at the doctor's office. Of course this started raising great concern with his Pediatrician and Pulminologist so we started making trips to Kansas City Children's Mercy yet again. I know I have blogged before about how incredibly ill he was as a baby so this trip was something we had done MANY times.

To make a very long story short he was tested for everything under the sun and everything came back normal. The only thing they could figure was the fact that he has had to have SOOOOOO much asthma medicine that his growth could have been stunted a little bit. They discussed growth hormones with my husband and I but there was NO WAY we were going to let our son get injected with these hormones until we did some research on them and they could prove to us that it was an absolute necessity for his health.

So, I first started with some research on the side effects of inhaled and oral steroids in children. Miles takes inhaled steroids every day twice a day to keep his airway as open as possible and when he gets out of control and his regular inhalers won't do the trick we have to move to oral steroids, mainly Prednisone. I found this website and it does mention that a side effects of oral steroids can be weight gain. I also found this article that basically says that the steroids can temporarily slow down growth but not stunt it all together. This would explain why, over the last 10 months, Miles has grown because we seem to have a better handle on his asthma with inhaled rather than oral steroids, at least for the last several months anyway.

I then decided to look up the pros and cons of the growth hormones. I found this article and it kind of has my wheels turning because that is one thing Miles has not been treated for. They explained him to a tea. He grew fairly regular until he was about 2 1/2 then quit. He looks so much smaller and younger than the other kids in his grade and wears shoes 3 sizes smaller than my 6 year old nephew. Although this article talks about growth hormone deficiency I could see where Miles would fit into that category. I haven't had much success in finding actual pros and cons but I have been able to find when it would be necessary and when it wouldn't.

We are so confused on what to do. Does anyone out there know a child that has had to get these growth hormone shots? If so some feedback would be great!!!!!