Dr. Boop

Holt has a misshapen head from a crick in the neck, called torticollis, when he was a newborn.  At his last check-up, I requested to see a neurosurgeon about it.  I had probably spent too many hours on the internet researching this condition.  There are helmets for babies to help correct the shape of the head.  In my study, I found that the earlier you treat it, the better they respond.

I could not wait to see the neurologist!  I had been waiting a month already.

Holt has become an extremely active child.  When we arrived, he quickly decided that he did not want to be strapped in his stroller.  He is all about mobility.  There was no way I was letting him scoot around the waiting room carpet.  I decided a reasonable compromise would be the recently vacated couch.

After scooting up and down the couch a couple dozen times, I was tired of corralling him from the edge and tried to settle him down with a toy.  Fortunately, I had packed a sack full.  However, the only one he wanted to play with was the telephone (pictured left).  There is no volume control and every button plays a nice, lengthy, loud song.  I'm sure the waiting room full of patients appreciated Holt's musical medley.

When we got called back to a room, I sat Holt on the exam table, which was covered in butcher paper.  Within seconds, Holt was shaking the paper, which turned into tearing the paper, and attempting to eat the paper.  He was having a blast!

Dr. Boop came in briefly to look at his head and requested that he get an x-ray.  We were to wait in the room for the nurse to accompany us over to their imaging center.  Holt had become bored with the butcher paper and his sack full of toys.  Though he was highly interested in the magazine I had borrowed as reading material from the waiting room.  He grabbed for the magazine just as the nurse walked in.  I'm pretty sure there was a flurry of paper between the magazine being snatched away and the butcher paper being tossed aside.  "Nothing!" I replied as I planted all the floating paper down on the table with a quick snack.  She glanced at Holt and laughed.

It was on to the x-ray.  Now, my most recent x-ray experience was Hawk in the pigg-o-stat.  So I was understandably a little afraid of what was next.  The nurse swaddled him in a sheet to get a good image of his head.  But by the way he was screaming, I guess he thought he was in the pigg-o-stat.

When that was over, we were transported back to an exam room which had been conveniently stripped of all accessible periodicals.  That is, unless you were seven feet tall.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Dr. Boop returned shortly after and said that everything looked normal.  Holt is a mild case and does not need a helmet.  Yay! The doctor explained that they ran a study a few years back with mild cases.  Half were treated with a helmet and half without.  By age four, you could not tell who had treatment and who had not.

After that long appointment with a very busy baby, I was ready for a nap!  And so thankful that Holt's head will correct itself.