- Lung Specialist- We were told that Sienna’s airways are always constricted which means it takes a lot out of her to breathe right. This did not come too much as a surprise; thus the reason I requested an appointment with a lung specialist. Sienna is always sick. Since a young age, she seems to get a cold easily and often which usually led to bronchiolitis, vomiting when she coughed, inhalers to calm her breathing, and many trips to the hospital. While we were there, he noticed her sides were in-drawing meaning she was having hard time breathing. I could not see this, in my eyes, she did not have a runny nose nor a cough therefore she was healthy. She did get an allergy test and surprisingly she is allergic to cats, dogs, dust mites and feathers. Well now that we know her airways are fragile, we must fix it. Because of her CMV, she has poor muscle tone which he says is contributing to the constricted airways. Therefore we must continue doing exercises to strengthen her trunk tone. Second, he put her on QVAR, a corticosteroid oral inhaler and ventilin daily until she gets stronger. We will return to see him in 4 months.
2-Endocrinologist (Hormone Specialist)- CMV does cause poor growth, however, our pediatrician at the Glenrose recommended that we see a hormone specialist to make sure that we are not overlooking what could be a factor in Sienna’s poor growth. So after a detailed review of Sienna’s history and our history; he came to the conclusion that Sienna’s poor weight gain is not due to her growth hormones but due to her having congenital CMV and to the fact that Kevin and I are small people. We return to see him in 6 months. According to their chart, with her weight and height of that day, she is actually gaining at a faster rate. Yeah! Let’s keep up the trend! She weighs 20lbs. 13oz..
We had a fantastic visit with my cousins, Darcy and Lisa, and our kids played, played, played. They were great hosts and took very good care of us, thank-you!
We also had a chance to visit some friends who we’ve been in touch with since May 09. A mutual friend introduced us because their daughter, Allison, just received bilateral cochlear implants last spring. Since then we’ve been in touch by phone and email so we decided to finally put a face to their friendly voices. We had a great time; it was such a pleasure to meet them and to share our stories.
Seeing that it is -40C here in northern Alberta, yes -40C, which marks the beginning of our cold winter, I am very happy that our next Edmonton appointment ( 4.5 hours away) is in mid February…. hopefully, after the brutal cold has past.
I am rather big, but my daughter born with congenital CMV was very small. She was only 50 pounds at the age of 16. But she was happy!
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