A Visit to Children's Hospital

Grace and Olivia had their semi-annual visit to Children's Hospital for x-rays and a visit with Dr. White to see how their scoliosis is progressing - or more hopefully, not progressing! We are so proud of Grace and Olivia and how willingly they wear their brace to their spine grow straight.

A typical visit to the orthopedic surgeon...

Simply put, it's a lot of waiting for a little bit of checking.

While taking a walk after checking in Grace discovered this silly frog.


Waiting in the waiting room...

x-ray time! The best part of the x-rays are the stickers afterward!

After the x-rays, we go back out to the waiting room and wait to be called back in for our visit with Dr. White, our Orthopedic Surgeon. And then of course once we are called back in we do a little more waiting for the dr. to arrive. Gratefully we were put in a room with working white board pens this time. Children's is the best.

When Dr. White arrives, he has Grace and Olivia do a few simple exercises like bend over and touch their toes, hop on one foot, etc. Usually they get to change into a Bugs Bunny gown but not today - what a bummer. Then Dr. White goes over the x-rays with me for a couple of minutes.

Some history/perspective...Back in April of 2007 Grace was diagnosed with a double curve making her spine look like an "S". Both curves measured 38 degrees. Shortly thereafter, Olivia was also diagnosed with a double curve that looked like a backward "S" (wierd huh?!). Both her curves measured 28 degrees. Curves under 20 degrees will usually be treated with a "wait and see," while curves over 25 degrees are usually braced. Once the curve is over 45-60 degrees (depending on the orthopedic surgeon) they start talking surgery. The purpose of the brace is not to "fix" the scoliosis, but rather to help the spine grow straight and prevent the curve from progressing. If the curve doesn't progress while in brace then it's working :) and bracing is continued.

So...after all that, the brace is working for both Grace and Olivia. Six months ago, Grace's curves were 29 degrees and 31 degrees. At this visit they were 30 degrees and 35 degrees.

Six months agao, Olivia's curves were 17 degrees and 21 degrees and then 16 degrees and 25 degrees at yesterday's visit.

And there you have it - Our trip to Children's! Of course the three of us stopped off at for pasta on the way home at University Village to avoid 5 o'clock traffic. Appointment days have always been validating so far. Olivia and Grace get kudos for wearing their brace and I'm reassured as the numbers stay below the initial diagnosis. This is such a long term experience that I know our visits might not always be so validating, but until then, I'll take what we have!

Books I Recommend

If you're interested...
Disease Proof Your Child and Eat to live by Joel Fuhrman
The China Study by T. Collin Campbell
Food for Life by Neal Barnard
The Food Revolution by John Robbins
Dr. Dean Ornish's books
The Omnivore's Dilema by Michael Pollan - a fascinating read on eating/food in America

My Journey to Health

I got something new in the mail yesterday for my kitchen. A brand new Cuisinart Pressure Cooker. It's so pretty I decided to take a picture of it and post it here on my blog.
You will notice it's sitting next to my beloved Vita-Mix - another purchase I made last spring as I journey to health. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

At the beginning of the year I went to an Enrichment night where a woman in my ward spoke about healthy living and the dietary changes they have made in their home since her husband had been diagnosed with cancer. It was a huge eye opener for me. I've always been interested in healthy eating/living but the information she shared was stuff I'd never heard before (or at least never listened to :)!). Most of her presentation came from D&C 89 and reading The China Study (a must read) and focused on the need to eat MORE vegetables, grains, fruits and legumes (beans) and LESS animal products.

I went home that night and immediately got online to check out The China Study from the local library. Apparantly I wasn't the only one interested in this as I was the 56th person waiting on hold for the book. She had recommended another book - Disease Proof Your Child by Joel Fuhrman. That one was in and a couple days later I picked it up. That's where my journey began. 15 or so books, a Vita Mix, a farm co-op membership and dozens of newly tried recipes later I'm still journeying :).

I began by just trying to eat more vegetables. Joel Fuhrman recommends eating a pound of raw and a pound of cooked vegetables a day. I did that for a couple of weeks at the beginning - that's A LOT of vegetables. I was eating all day just to get everything in! I'm still trying to eat more vegetables. I have a lot of green smoothies, try to put dark leafy veggies on the table at dinner, sneak them into muffins when baking, etc.

My attention this last month though has been on trying to include more grains. I never really cooked with grains before aside from white rice. Imagine my surprise when I found out there were dozens of other grains out there. Of course I new about wheat but I've also discovered Millet, quinoa, barley, and steel cut oats. And there are MORE!! I took a class this summer all about grains - hence the pressure cooker. The pressure cooker is going to revolutionize the way I cook :) - or at least make it easier. I just did a practice run with brown rice though and I'm not sure I'm convinced. As with everything this year in the kitchen, I'll keep trying. Some things are bound to stick.

A final thought about how my family is adjusting to my craziness...Chris is a good sport. He doesn't complain and listens attentively as I share some new alarmingly fascinating nugget of information from the latest book I'm reading. The kids - picky eaters to begin with - are, well, they're adjusting. Nicholas is clearly relishing in his healthy living - here he is slurping down one of my green smoothies and loving it. He loves brown rice mixed with milk (or soy milk) and the avacado/banana mash I feed him. Matthew is more willing than the girls to try something new but I don't know if that's saying much. We'll get there. If anything, we have a lot of good sharing moments about healthy bodies and the kinds of foods we need to eat so we can run and jump and skip and play. What more could I hope for?

It's been awhile hasn't it...

I've decided that blogging is a lot like scrapbooking for me. It's something I want to do, but keep putting off because I feel like I'm so behind. No more though! I declare today the first day of the rest of my blogging efforts :).

I dropped off sweet Mocky an hour ago for his first day of preschool. Chris just called and asked how it went and if I was sad. Heck no! And not for the selfish reasons you're all thinking. Mocky has wanted so badly to go to school and have his "own thing." Dropping the girls off for Kindergarten every day last year (and then again for 1st grade this year) was so sad. 4 out of the 5 days he asked why he couldn't go to kindergarten too. Sometime in the spring of last year, we dropped Grace and Olivia off as usual and I watched in the rear view mirror as Mocks looked longingly at them as they ran off to their classroom. After a moment he said, "Mom, I just really want to go to school too." I felt his sadness and went into the story of when I was little like him I had to watch my 5 brothers and sisters leave me behind and I wanted to go so badly also. He thought about that for less than a second and then said, "well Mom, when I'M a mom, I will let you to Kindergarten before you're 5 years old even if you won't let me."

So, was I sad to see Mocky run into his preschool room today without so much as a backward glance? Nope. He's finally like the big kids and I hope he's having a marvelous time.