Hi,

Allie has an appt w/ endocrine tomorrow at the suggestion of her ped. She is still 20-25% for weight and a little less for height.

Can any of you tell me what this doc will do or suggest, or what they are qualified in? I have no idea what to expect.

Thanks.

Sorry I have no idea what you should expect, but wanted to wish you good luck. Maya is also so small she is 25% for weight and 9% for height so I would be really interested to hear what this doc says so please do update us!

I have no idea either, but maybe you could google it? Good luck with the appt.!

I did google it b/c I was interested as well b/c my DD, Zoee does see an endocrine as well but for different reason(her diabetes and possible underactive thyroid)I am sorry to say that I can figure out that it is a doctor who does look at the growth, metablism(sp) and thyroid. See, I know about the thyroid but I thought they were dr's that look at the pancreas. Please what update us when you can. It will be interesting to hear what you have learn from the dr. Sorry that I was no help to you!

No experience here but curious. Is Allie's size the only reason she's seeing an endocrinologist? Catherine has always been around the 10th percentile for weight and 25th for height and none of her doctors think anything of it.

Yes, Allie's ped is crazy and every time we go to see her, she keeps telling us that she feels she's "missing something" with her. She recommended us seeing endocrine and neurology (I KNOW the neurology is not needed, she is smart as a whip - her doc is just plain mad). I tend to get depressed every time I take Allie to the ped so I am taking her to these docs so I can say :razzing: to the ped once we get normal results (we have met all of our insurance co-pays and deductibles for the year b/c of Allie's hospitilization in February so it won't cost me any more $$$).

She wondered if Allie has some kind of growth hormone issue. No, we know that when she eats, she gains, but I'm tired of this woman not listening to me. She's a very nice doc, but she really is inexperienced with non-eaters. It seems that Allie baffles most of the docs we see with her non-eating. Everyone keeps telling me that the non-eaters they see are not "normal" kids and that they have some other issue like CP, etc.

I think that when they put Allie on the scale tomorrow they are going to think I"m crazy for bringing her, but maybe I'm not, so who knows. We weighed her on Sat. and she was 18 lbs 1 oz (10 1/2 months). I was very happy about that number.

However, she does still have feeding problems so I'm not denying that SOMETHING is wrong with her, I just think it's all related to her GERD and DGE and nothing else.

Phew, enough venting. I'll update you guys tomorrow on what they do.

Thanks ladies!
C

I have no idea what an endocrinologist would do for a child as mine have not had to go to one.

However, I myself had to go as a child due to a thyroid problem. For me, it involved blood work to test for deficiencies, thryroid issues, parathyroid issues, and check my growth. I was 5 foot 7 inches at the age of 9 years and wore a size 9 ladies shoe and was as fat as a pencil. As my father was 6'9" and my Mother is 5'10" I came by it naturally.:wink:

They knocked out my thyroid and then put me on thryoxin drug apparently for life. My gland has since partially regenerated though so I waffle on thyroxin.

Essentially I would expect the worst to be bloodwork and history taking.

Pediatric endocrinology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrinology) is a medical subspecialty dealing with variations of physical growth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth) and sexual development in childhood, as well as diabetes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes) and other disorders of the endocrine glands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_gland).

By disease, the most common disease of the specialty is type 1 diabetes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_1_diabetes), which usually accounts for at least 50% of a typical clinical practice. The next most common problem is growth disorders, especially those amenable to growth hormone treatment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hormone_treatment). Pediatric endocrinologists are usually the primary physicians involved in the medical care of infants and children with intersex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex) disorders. The specialty also deals with hypoglycemia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoglycemia) and other forms of hyperglycemia in childhood, variations of puberty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty), as well other adrenal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal), thyroid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid), and pituitary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituitary) problems. Many pediatric endocrinologists have interests and expertise in bone metabolism, lipid metabolism, adolescent gynecology, or inborn errors of metabolism.

The most common reason I hear about is blood sugar issues (low and high) and growth hormone deficiencies. When the weight percentile is higher than the height percentile, a growth hormone deficiency may be a reason. She may have thought of it because your daughter's height is lower than weight on the percentile chart.

Thanks Carla for checking that information for us...It was great.

Allie's ped is crazy and every time we go to see her, she keeps telling us that she feels she's "missing something" with her. She recommended us seeing endocrine and neurology (I KNOW the neurology is not needed, she is smart as a whip - her doc is just plain mad).
Sometimes things can show up in spite of a child's smartness. Evan is smart, just delayed.

The endocrine doc was surprised that we even had an appt with her. She said Allie is not "small" that she's growing great. Her head was in 25-50%, height 25% and weight 20%. She is happy with that and said she could not suggest any tests to do. She said Allie's muscle control was great, her eye contact and interaction was great, etc.

We told her that our ped is the one who wanted her to see Allie, and also told her that her ped recommended that we see Neuro. She said that she would see no reason to ever recommend that Allie see Neuro, but would leave it up to us if we wanted to do that. I feel much better. This woman is a doc from U of M Hospital (world renouned) who is much older than Allie's ped and I'm sure has seen a lot of babies with other issues.

Allie's neuro appt is in September. I'm going to keep it for now, but I'm not sure if we will cancel it or not. After seeing genetics twice (because after the first time Allie's ped still wasn't happy) and now this, I am beginning to think that we need to swtich pediatricians.

Thanks everyone,
C