Monday, April 1, 2013

Annabelle's Nuerology Appointment

So yesterday we finally took Annabelle to see the neurologist. We'd had this appointment planned for most of her life but there never was an open slot with the neurologist that was soon enough that an appointment could be set. This one was officially set back in November to give you an idea of how busy this department gets I guess. The reason Annabelle needed to see a neurologist, is that every now and again she has these weird "twitches". Her face will tense up and sometimes rock back and forth, and the way she reacts afterwards is like it never happened. It's almost like someone hits her "pause" button. Originally the her primary doctor and her cardiologist thought it was typical infantile spasms, but as she got closer to being a year old and she kept doing it, and along with her heart defect, they decided that it needed to be checked out just in case.  To prepare for this appointment I was told that making a list of all of the times that I saw her "twitch", dates, times, details about what she was doing around the time that they happened. Since November, she's had around 15 of them and they are never reserved to a specific activity, she could be eating, sleeping, playing, etc. Up until about two weeks ago, after over a month of not "twitching" at all, we thought she was finally over it, but they came back and now they have gotten longer. Where in the beginning they lasted a few seconds, the past few have been between 30 seconds and a minute. It's safe to say I was more than anxious to see what the neurologist would say.

Only to find out that he literally had nothing to say. He asked me to act out one of her "twitches", looked over the list I had brought of all the times that I had seen her do it, and in the end told me that without a video there was really nothing he was going to do about it. After all this time waiting to take Annabelle to see this guy to figure out what's wrong with her (if anything), and leave with no new information at all other than it could be a release of pent up energy but without a video he couldn't say for sure. There was literally no point in going in the end. I mean it's like he thought I was lying. I can't predict when these things are going to happen, otherwise wouldn't I have recorded it by now? He seemed to think so....So short of filming her constantly there is really now way to do this. So I just have to hope they stop on their own, or that I get lucky and she just happens to do it sometime when I'm already filming her.

The most irritating thing of all, was after we left and we out to eat she "twitched" within 10 minutes of sitting down, and we all saw her do it, but at her appointment the doctor couldn't be bother to check her at all.