A Day at Cleveland Clinic

As I sit here writing this Delaney is sitting on the floor with only a diaper on. She is talking, talking, talking and there's drool all over her. You would never know this was happening to her. She is always so happy. Unless you know what you are looking for, you would never even know what is going on inside her little body. It was only the fact that we are with her all the time that we just happened to find this..this rare, horrible problem.

On that note, apparently, our first ortho opinion was a little off...okay a lot off. Today we saw a specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. He confirmed that Delaney Cobb angle (the actual curve of the spine) is 40 degrees. But here's the bad part. There is something called a RVAD (rib vertebral angle difference) which is the angle of the rib to the vertebrae. The first doctor (we'll call him Dr. F) said Delaney's was 0. That it looked fine. Fast forward to Dr. K at the Clinic, who measured it at 50 DEGREES!!! Keep in mind anything above 20 degrees is part of the whole progressive diagnoses. So it is a bit worse than we thought. Also, something I thought was odd...the first ortho didn't even touch Delaney, just kind of glanced at her and then looked at the x-ray. Dr. K at CC moved her all around and felt her spine.

Two good things about the appointment was Dr. K was very open to the casting treatment. He highly recommended that if bracing doesn't work in a few months to move on to casting. (however, as I said, we aren't "waiting to see") And 2nd the doctors don't think an MRI is needed because she seems healthy otherwise. (Sometimes they do an MRI to determine if the scoliosis is part of a bigger problem; i.e. cerebral palsy, spina bifida ect..) So THANK GOD this is not part of an even bigger problem. So we are off to Shriners. Can't wait to get this moving.

OHHH...and Miss Delaney pulled herself up to standing today!! It is so funny to see such a tiny little body crawling and standing up:) She is 9 months old now and only weighs 13 lbs..but she is healthy and happy and eats well, we just have really tiny girls.

Michael & I aren't sleeping well, as I am sure you all can imagine. He has stressful dreams and tosses and turns all night while I wake up and start thinking about all of this, and the next thing I know it's dawn. Hopefully after we see some improvement we will be able to relax again. Well, off to feed our happy, naked girl. Thanks again to all the wonderful emails. It really means so much:)