Not Growing Pains...

Don't you hate when you hear words you really don't want your doctor to tell you?  That happened to me today.  I took Paizlei into the doctor today because she has been complaining of her right knee and leg hurting.  She has been doing this off and on all winter.  I just passed it off as growing pains, because she is at the age where growing pains start.  Where she is a girl, I thought she was just being over-dramatic about it, because that is Paizlei.  She is our little DQ!  The last couple of days, the screaming and crying out in pain, waking up from a deep sleep because she is in so much pain, it's been a living nightmare.  This morning, she woke up around 7am, which isn't like Paizlei AT ALL, she usually sleeps until 9am or 10am.  When I went in her room, she was sitting on the floor holding her leg, huge tears in her eyes, crying so hard, because her knee hurt.  She was screaming, wouldn't put any weight on her right leg.    After an about 90 minutes of trying to get her to calm down, I finally gave up and called the doctor and scheduled an appointment.


After a bunch of pushing, prodding, pulling her leg in every different direction, Paizlei crying out in pain because what he was doing hurt, he sent us over to the hospital for an x-ray or her right knee.  Before we walked over to the hospital, he told me of a couple things that could be wrong, growing pains and bone spurs being a couple of them.  We walked back over to the doctor's office, waited around for a bit.  When he came in the room, he pulled the x-ray up, asked me to come look at it.  His response to what he saw, "This is what I normally see in my older patients with on-set rheumatoid arthritis."  WHAT?  He says her x-ray shows definite signs of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I had a feeling after I made the appointment this morning, and even mentioned to Zane, that I am almost betting she has arthritis.  However, I was in NO WAY thinking JRA.  Her little patella was all cloudy, it looked like around the outside of it was all chewed up.  It was all I could do to hold it together in his office.  After seeing her x-ray, my heart sank.  I know exactly what she is going through, as I have been dealing with arthritis pretty much my whole life.


Our doctor is waiting to get the actual report from the radiologist before he made a definite diagnosis, however, he is almost certain that's what she has.  He also sent out a sedimentation rate test and wanted to wait to get those results back as well.  He was hoping to get both results back today, however, we never heard from him.  I'm sure we will hear from him in the morning, as he wants to get on top of it, in hopes of keeping her pain at a minimum.


Until we know exactly what is going to happen, she is on 3 doses of Motrin, every 6 hours, every day.  I am supposed to exercise her knee 3 times a day, just to keep the motion there, not that she has motion issues.  Also, when she starts complaining of it hurting, we can put a moist heat pad on her knee, over her pants or pajama's, turned on to the lowest setting.


Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis is certainly NOT what I wanted to hear today.  After all this time, passing it off as "just growing pains", I feel horrible.  My sweet sister-in-law, Corinne, gave me the best advice...don't beat yourself up because of how you handled it.  At the end of the day, just remember, you did what you thought was best to help her.  And, I truly believe Corinne knows what she is talking about, as her 5 year old was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at 3 years old.  Thank you, Corinne!  You definitely gave me a different perspective and a better way to handle our next obstacle.


I will update this as we know more.  I'm sure our doctor is going to send us to a JRA specialist once we know more.