Dr Mick

We went today to Birmingham to see Dr Mick (endocrinologist), she was very nice! She spent almost 45 minutes in the room talking, explaining, and examining. We don't have any answers yet but we did a bone age x-ray of Haley's left hand and blood work to check one of the growth hormone levels and thyroid levels and we should get all of those results back next week. The nurse is supposed to call me within the next two weeks to give me our appointment time for a half day growth hormone study and it will probably be the end of November or the beginning of December. Dr Mick says all signs point to underactive growth hormone production at this point, they usually go this route if the child is more than 1.5 deviations below the growth chart and Haley Grace is 3 deviations below so we were definite candidates. She usually runs all of these tests over the course of a year following the child every three months but because so many specialists are following Haley so closely and have been for years she felt the need to go ahead aggressively at this point. We are basically looking at three outcomes:
1.) She needs growth hormones this would mean her body isn't making enough on its own and this would be one injection a day six days a week until she reaches the age most girls quit growing. They can't make up for time lost but they would help her to grow at a healthy rate from here on out which would mean she will still be small but not too small.
2.) She needs thyroid meds. This can be regulated but can be tricky as she grows and changes through puberty and stuff and this would mean meds. for the rest of her life probably...
3.) She is producing the right amount of growth hormones on her own and her bone age shows the same as her chronological age this would mean there is nothing they can do it would just be another anomaly and she will just be short...when i asked what would be so bad about that she explained she wouldn't reach 4'11 and she would be considered a 'small person' and so the only bad part is the logistics of that, she wouldn't be able to reach the peddles to drive without assistance, she could never drive a car with an air bag, etc.
Basically to sum it up, we didn't hear anything suprising today, we feel good about this new doctor and her approach and we are just praying for answers. After talking to her today we are praying that is just an underactive growth hormone (option 1). Thank you for keeping her in your prayers!

On a slightly different note:
Haley's hair was falling out by the handfulls throughout September, when i say falling out i don't mean like a little when you brush it...i mean i took out a ponytail holder and most of the hair in it came out!!! It stopped for a few weeks and started again this week, at this point she has less than half the hair she had before and you can see her scalp when you pull it back for a bow...I called the liver doctor yesterday and he was very excited he says the bad news is we could lose most of it but the great news is that means she is completely healed from the liver failure and this is her body completely redoing itself it is letting go of the hair that was damaged during the trauma so this is the final stage of healing from all of the nightmare in May!!! What a blessing, its only hair and will grow back I was so excited to hear such wonderful news!!!