Bone Density Scan

Friday afternoon Travis went for his bone density scan. He wasn't too sure about the gel that's used for ultrasound, but quickly decided it was pretty cool. He helped the lady doing the scan measure his tibia and watched as she marked the halfway point on his tibia with a special white pencil. I think his favorite part of all was the screen when she was doing the actual scan...green on the stoplight when data was being collected, red light when not, and best of all crossed checkered flags each time the data collection was done. ;) Not surprised one bit.

The values confirmed what T's doctors thought, the bone density in his left tibia is significantly lower compared to his right tibia. The left tibia bone density measured over 2.5 standard deviations below normal for kids his age. Basically this means that he is in the bottom 1% in bone density for his left tibia when compared to other kids his age. His right tibia showed basically normal bone density.

What this means...I'm not sure. I did hear it is not surprising to see this in NF1 kids with bowed tibias. It will be interesting to see if his orthopedic team has further insight.

Sunday evening Travis started running a fever around 103F and had a real sore throat. This is the first time he's run a high temp being on Rapamycin during non-office hours. I called his pediatrician's office and his pediatrician was on-call. It was so wonderful to not have to explain T's background when he called. With strep going around, he suggested we go to the Kids Care (after hours care center) and have Travis tested for strep. The rapid test came back negative and they suspected a virus. Travis was more than ready to be home after the appointment and woke up Monday morning with a temp of ~100F. He stayed home from school on Monday and by that evening his temperature was normal. Tuesday he went back to school and so far so good.

We postponed Travis' wheelchair appointment since we didn't know how he would be feeling on Tuesday. The guys at Shriners said it should be a quick appointment and call when he's feeling back to normal.