A Scare!

What a scare we had with Jaedyn this spring! In February she started complaining that her knee hurt. It came on suddenly with no history of injury that we could identify. Over the course of a week she went from energetic and running everywhere to crying and crawling everywhere. It was even waking her up in the night. So after a week we took her to a sports medicine doctor. I was concerned about a condition that can affect the hip in kids and present as knee pain. He was too. So x-rays were ordered of her hips and knees and nothing was found to be wrong. So he explained that sometimes as children grow the tendon can pull on the bone and create inflammation. He prescribed some exercises and anti-inflammatories. We faithfully dosed the anti-inflammatories and did the exercises daily. These were tough for her as just walking made her knee hurt.

During the course of exercises and medication her knee stopped hurting as much but her thigh muscle started shrinking. I thought that would be normal if she weren't doing the exercises but to be working so hard at them and be getting atrophy? Something seemed off.

So we visited an orthopedic PA. He was baffled. He did tests, ran repeat x-rays, spoke with his supervising physician as well as the physio-neurologist. All agreed that if she was doing the exercises her thigh shouldn't be shrinking. And the pain was still waking her up 4x/week! We all needed sleep!

So we got referred to Primary Children's hospital. There was a long wait list. So June finally rolls around and at this point the pain has diminished a lot, she's only waking up 1-2x/wk and her thigh is starting to regain some size. But we kept the appt to make sure there wasn't more we needed to do. They did some tests, scratched their heads, ran some blood work and were alarmed that her rheumatoid factor was elevated so they wanted to recheck in a few weeks.

A few weeks later, Jaedyn is all better. No pain. No crawling. No sleepless nights. Her thigh is continuing to incr in size and her rheumatoid factor has returned to normal. Weird? Blessed! I appreciate my children's health! Nothing turns me into a hypochondriac faster than an unseen owie in one of my kids!