Good News!

Luke had his appointment with the Pediatric Orthopedic Specialist this morning up at Primary Children's Hospital. For those of you that don't know, Luke was born with Infantile Scoliosis. From the day he was born we noticed that Luke would always arch his body to the right. So, at his two month appointment I mentioned this to his pediatrician and she noticed red creases on his right side from always leaning that way. His pediatrician sent us to get his spine x-rayed and sure enough she called us the next day and told us that Luke has a 23 degree left thoracic curve in his spine. A 23 degree curve is considered mild to moderate so his doctor wanted us to take him to see a specialists to see if he needed to be put into a brace. We were dreading the thought of a brace because he would have to wear it 23 hours a day for several years. The other major bummer of all of this is that Luke was diagnosed right as we were applying for a private insurance plan (since I just quit and Barrett's work doesn't have a group insurance plan we had to go to a private plan.) Needless to say, Luke was denied by all of the insurance companies because they determined that he was an "unknown risk" because there was not a treatment plan in place. So were are faced with putting him on COBRA which has an astronomical monthly premium. Barrett and I signed with HumanaOne because they were the only company that agreed to reconsider covering Luke after a treatment plan was put in place.

Anyway, so that takes us to his appointment today. We went and saw Dr. John Smith who specializes in Scoliosis. He took a look at Luke's x-rays and examined his back, tummy, and hips. Luke was a very good boy during all of this, he just stared at the doctor trying the figure out what the heck he was doing. Dr. Smith explained to us that there are two types of Infantile Scoliosis. One type is progressive and needs to be treated immediately and the other type will spontaneously correct itself as the infant gets stronger and sits and stands up (we have noticed that he doesn't arch as much as he used to.) Dr. Smith told us that he thinks that Luke's curve will correct itself on its' own and that no treatment is necessary!!!!! We just have to go back in four months for some follow up x-rays and we're supposed to play with him sitting or standing up as much possible in order to strengthen his back. Dr. Smith was able to determine that Luke had the type of Scoliosis that would correct itself because his ribs are symmetrical on both sides and his vertabrae are all normal and intact. While Infantile Scoliosis is very rare (only 1 in every 10,000 infants have it), Dr. Smith said that among those that have it it is most common in large, first born, male infants. That definitely describes Luke. While they don't have an explanation why infants may develop curved spines, Dr. Smith said that because Luke was such a big baby he was probably very scrunched inside of me which made his spine curve as he grew (I could have told you that.) Now hopefully we can get him on our insurance plan in stead of COBRA.

A huge thank you to all of you who kept Luke in your prayers. We appreciate it more than you will ever know.




Pictures of Luke watching Bob the Builder before we took him to the doctor. Can you believe that he is only three months old?