We had our first visit to Scottish Rite Hospital today and it went great! Harper was diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis. We are still uncertain of what type of arthritis but we have some sort of diagnosis. She had some more lab work done today and hopefully we will have a complete diagnoses soon. I am pleased with that!

Treatment:
Cody and I will have to give Harper a shot of Methotrexate (switching from her leg to her arm) once a week. This could go on for a couple of years. Along with that she is taking a certain type of steroid to help the swelling go down and to help her regain some strength. She will only be on that for a couple of months. She is also taking Folic Acid and a higher strength anti-inflammatory medicine. We go back to see the doctor in April to see how she is doing on the medication.

We should see a little improvement within the next week or two. She should hopefully be able to at least pull up by herself. Once she gets some strength back we will begin physical therapy to help her start walking. This could be at least another 3-4 months.

She will have blood drawn about every 6-8 weeks to make sure everything is okay. They will also have to check her liver and spleen as well.

There are no predictions as to whether she will have this for the rest of her life but our goal right now is to keep the arthritis calm, get the swelling down and get her to walk. This could take a while. After that the doctors want her to be in remission for one year before we start talking about taking her off the medication. Again this could be years.

Cody and I are relieved that we are finally getting some answers and can breath a little easier now. Harper of course is doing wonderful. She has been an angel this whole process and I couldn't be any more thankful for such an easy little girl.

Pictures

New Hair Style

I bought some sponge rollers to roll Harper's hair. She didn't like me putting them in but she did keep them on for a while. I'll post some pictures with the final result.

It's a BOY!!!

Cody and I found out this afternoon that we are expecting a little boy!!!! We are super excited and I can't wait to get started on the new room. Now the search is on for a name. Hum?????

Crazy Overnight Hospital Stay

Yesterday was a bit crazy. We got to the hospital at 10:00 am, filled out all the paperwork and talked to all the nurses and doctors. She went under about 10:45 and the waiting began. The doctor told us that it would take about 1 1/5 hours for the MRI and about an hour for the scope, then once she wakes up we can see her. So we were thinking about 1:30 - 2:00 we should be able to see her. Well 1:00 rolled around and the doctor came out and said they were running behind and she should begin the scope about 1:30ish. More waiting.
While we were in the waiting area a harp player came in and started playing. I thought, well this is nice. How thoughtful of Cooks to do this for all the patients families waiting. They started setting up tables and filling them with food. Yum, I was hungry! Then all of the sudden a nurse came to us and asked to move us to a small room because they were going to have a meeting in there. WHAT? We have to leave the waiting area for a meeting? So we move. We wait there for another couple of hours. A nurse came back and said we could move back into the waiting area, the meeting was over. They did bring us some chocolate covered strawberries.
So it is now 5:00 and the doctor finally came out. He brought us some pictures and CD's with all her scans on it. He explained what he saw. He does not think that it is PVNS. I hope he is right! At about 5:30 we got to go see her. She was not to happy to say the least. It took about 3-4 hours before we finally got her to calm down. Every time some one came in to take her blood pressure or touch her she would say, "done done". She wanted everyone to leave and be done. It was kinda cute but sad.
We got her to calm down and to sleep at about 8:45 and I finally laid down. I did not sleep the night before and I was exhausted. It started to rain and we were watching the weather. The nurse explained to us earlier that they had a safe room in case of a tornado and explained to procedure just in case. I'm thinking to myself, yeah whatever. Well about 9:15 she came in and said time to go we have to go to the safe room. They unhooked Harper and we were off. I'm thinking to myself, this would only happen to us. Well we only had to stay in there for about 15 min and were able to go back to our room. Luckily Harper went right back to sleep. As for me, not so easy. It's pretty hard sharing a twin sized bed when your 19 weeks pregnant. I was up all night and so was Harper. I let Cody sleep, well if he got any?
We get up this morning waiting to see the doctor. Well of course he's running behind and won't be here until lunch time. It's now 9:15 am and I just want to go home, take a shower and go to sleep. I know that's not going to happen but oh well. Harper is doing good, she's eating and drinking good. She is a little testy, she wants to go home too!

So to wrap things up, the past 24 hours has been crazy! Hopefully we will have some answers soon and we can get her treated!

More Bath Time Fun

I bought Harper some bath markers for her to play with in the bath tub. Cody swears that Harper did this.....

Marathon this Fall

So Kelly, my little sister ran a 1/2 marathon this past year. Me being the runner in the family, running since I was 7 years old, has never thought about entering in a marathon. Well now Kelly is going to run the Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon again this fall. Now I can't let her outdo me so I have just now in this moment decided that I am going to join her. I am due at the beginning of July so that gives me about 4 months to train. Not a lot of time but I was going to start working out anyways and this will give me a good reason stay with it. I'm actually excited about this and think it will be great! Now lets see if I actually go through with it!!!!!

Wish me luck!!!!