Friday, July 6, 2012

We've been approved!

We just found out the our insurance approved Amelia's treatment. We are scheduled for her digital imaging appointment on July 18th and her band will be on August 1st. Here we go!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Amelia's DOC band Evaluation

     Tim and I decided that it was best that I take Amelia to the appointment and that he would stay home with our other two girls. We want Paige and Emma to not have to make the drive as much as possible. Amelia and I drove to my mom's house in Temecula and then drove to Orange the next day. I'm glad my mom went with me to the appointment. The whole experience is a lot to take in especially without Tim there with me.
     The appointment started off with a photo shoot. Amelia was totally the star of the show. They had all kinds of cool toys that kept her attention while taking the pictures. They also took measurements of her head and got her medical history.
       I met with Glynna who was the clinician at the Orange office. She started off by letting me know that Amelia's brain development looked great. She has been hitting all of her milestones and the sutures in her skull are allowing her brain to grow. Well that was great news and a great transition in to the not so good news. You can see in the third pic that her jaw is misaligned quite a bit. I didn't even realize that was a problem. If this remains uncorrected it can lead to TMJ syndrome. You can also see in picture 2 that her head is curved towards the left. The first pic shows that the right side of her face is more full and the left side is more defined. You can also see the difference in the ears. Her ears are subject to chronic ear infections if not treated. Not to mention that if we do not get treatment her face will stay asymmetrical permanently.
      The good news is that she will only need the helmet for 6 to 10 weeks, but she will have to come in every 7 days to get it adjusted. We decided to do the appointments at the Phoenix office because it's only a 4hour drive each way verses 41/2 to Orange. Now we just have to wait for the insurance to approve their portion (very small portion) and then we will set up her DSi appointment.
  


Meet Amelia

     This is my beautiful daughter Amelia. She is our third daughter and a cute little bundle of personality. She is now 4.5 months old, but I started to notice something wasn't quite right pretty much from day one. She was perfectly healthy, but I kept noticing that one eye seemed a little off from the other. I couldn't quite place what the problem was exactly, I just knew it didn't seem symmetrical. My husband thought it would correct itself and it was just because she was a newborn. I thought that may be the case as well so I let it go for awhile. The older she got, the more I started to notice it. I also noticed that one ear was lower and off to the side more than the other. She also favored sleeping on only the right side of her head.
    We went to the doctor and she said that Amelia had Torticollis. She also said the eye was swollen from constantly laying on the one side. I originally thought this as well and observed her sleeping for the next couple of days. I noticed she could move her head to the other side with out a problem she just didn't want to. I also noticed at that point that her head was shaped oddly. We went back to the doctor and she diagnosed her with Plagiocephaly.
    We were right in the middle of moving from California to Arizona when all this happened. This also meant that we had to wait for new insurance to kick in. I was terrified after reading about Plagiocephaly that her condition would become permanent, so I did everything I could to keep her off her head. Her head shape started to look better, but her ears were still pretty off. When we got insurance we took her to her new doctor and she confirmed the diagnosis and recommend we take her to Cranial Technologies for an evaluation. I set up an appointment with them out of their California office. The only locations are almost 200 miles away and their is nothing in the general vicinity to accommodate her needs. Major bummer!