The Puddles

I took Ben to his annual physical exam on Monday.  I know that he sees doctors all of the time, but no one looks at his entire well being except at the annual visit.  They see his heart, his kidneys, his g.i. system, and recently . . . his ankle, but not the whole of Ben. At this visit, she was concerned about Ben’s . . . for lack of  better words . . . temper tantrums.  He has a tendency to get really frustrated during homework or with friends or with situations or with sisters and it is like . . . once he gets to the mountain top, he doesn’t know how to get back down.  We talk to him about stepping away from the situation and taking deep breaths, but he really needs to learn to do some of this by himself. We won’t be there all of the time to help him.  So we are starting with the counselor at school to work with him. The problem is that everyone gets stressed and freaks out, but Ben’s stress causing very adverse reactions on every part of his body.

And then Ben didn’t do well on his eye screening, so now we must go to the doctor’s office to get his eyes checked.  Luckily, I work for a great optometrist so I’ll take him there.  But still, it is yet another visit.

Madie went to her appointment yesterday with Dad.  They checked the growth on her ear (it grew back since the removal of it last May).  The doctor said we could just watch it. Yeah!  He thinks it is a cyst and that if it doesn’t bother her and it doesn’t get out of control that we can let her have it.  I’m guessing that Madie is just going to live with it knowing her.  She would rather ignore the fact that it is there.  Works for me this time.

We have one more appointment on Friday.  This one we get to go without Ben. Chris and I will meet with the pediatrician for our final review on all of Ben’s ADD testing.  If the result is “Yes, he has ADD”, then we can go to school and request accommodations for Ben in class (right now his teacher won’t make any significant moves without an official  diagnosis).  Just one more thing. But that will be the final visit for a while.

As long as no one gets sick!