Shameless plug for our doctors

I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about Piper’s doctors.  Not really, anyway.

We see the Special Care Clinic at The Children’s Hospital here in Denver.  We L-O-V-E them.  Seriously, absolutely, completely and totally love them.  They’re similar to the Down syndrome clinics that other cities have, only they see all medically “difficult” kids.

It is absolutely the best place for Piper to be.  We have a couple doctors that we always see, if they’re in clinic that day (all of our scheduled appointments are with them, of course).  If they’re not, like today, we get squeezed into someone else’s schedule, with no issues. 

The best part is that it’s a one-stop shopping experience.  I called at 8 this morning, 15 minutes later had an appointment for 10:40.  We checked in, and before I had even paid the receptionist, the check-in nurse was calling us.  She walked us to our room, and we saw a doctor by 11.  They (the doctor and two residents) sent us down a different hallway for a blood draw (which took less than 3 minutes total from the time we signed in there) and headed back to clinic.  During that time, the doctor and his residents went upstairs to chat with the Chief of Dermatology.  While we waited for the test results, the dermatologist came in and checked out Piper.  By the time he was done, the clinic doc did a thorough exam of Piper, and then blood tests were back.  We have instructions to go back on Thursday morning (to see the doctor that we saw today, so we don’t have to start at square one explaining again, which I’m a fan of), and if the spots are still there, the dermatologist is going to come back down to our clinic to have another look. 

We got there at 10:30; we were out, with everything, including the blood results back and follow-up appointment, before 12.  The doctor spent a good hour with us, in our room, not including the time he was upstairs talking with dermatology. 

And, to make things even better, we love the doctors!  The dermatologist had a Mickey Mouse tie on, and red Converse tennies. 

So, those funny red dots on Piper’s toes are what precipitated all this today.  I called the nurse line this morning, really looking for justification and a “it’s probably nothing” response.  She said it was definitely not “normal”, and that she wanted to get us in to see a doctor, not the NP, today.  Not what I particularly wanted to hear, but I also felt a little better that I was justified in my moderate freak-out yesterday.

She has some petechiae on her arms and legs, but the things they are most concerned about are these hard-ish, bruise-like dots on her feet.  They appeared, out of the blue, yesterday.  They’re starting to dissipate, and they’re not as dark as they were, but they’re definitely still there.  To rule out Leukemia, they did a CBC today.  Her platelets are fine, although her white blood count is low and her lymphocytes are high, which probably just means she has a little viral infection.  It’s odd, though, because she has no other symptoms- she’s happy happy, no fever, eating fine…  It’d be nice if that’s all they are!  The dermatologist said that he doesn’t particularly want to biopsy them, mostly because they’re on the soles of her feet and will be very difficult to heal (ha…  didn’t see that pun coming…), but if they don’t go away, he does want to make sure they’re benign and nothing to worry about. 

I think that Piper decided she didn’t want to go a full three months without seeing her favorite medical professionals.  The clinic is really good about giving kids positive visits on occasion, even if that means putting off vaccinations, for example, for a few weeks.  It’s nice that they try really hard so that these kids, who are bound to be there more often than typical kids, aren’t horrified of all their visits. 

However.  They may be doing too good of a job. 

Surely there’s some middle ground between hating the visits and creating odd things to buy your way to see them.