Bones Institute Visit

Both kids' knees started to lock awhile ago. Jimmy said he used to have locked knees all the time he was little. Brandon can straighten up his own leg but Kyra screams bloody murder until one of us does it. At her 7-year old visit Dr. Bartlett recommended to schedule a visit to specialist.

That day was the day. Kyra was nervous first but Dr. Hennrikus was so good with her! First he said he thought she was 14, it put her into ease to laugh and say she was only 7. He asked her who was President right now. She quickly said Barak Obama. He was surprised she knew that because most 1st graders thought it was George Washington. She Said right away he was the very first one. At this point Dr. said she deserved a prize for knowing and an assistant brought her crayons and lollipop.

He asked her to hop on one foot and run in the hallway and a few other things. Next step was to take her X-rays. Except at dentist office she never had it done so she was a little bit worried but again, the lady radiologist was very nice and helped Kyra who was very stiff, to lay the way she needed her to.

After looking at the results, Dr. said he thought what was happening was this: there is muscle between two bones in the knees called meniscus and may be when Kyra moves her knee, one of the bones gets stuck on that muscle and it pulls her knee cap. Ouch. Just hurts even to think about it.

Anyway, there are two ways - one is to observe (especially since how young she is) and second one is if it gets too bad, they can surgically go inside her knee and shave off this muscle but that would mean that because she would not have muscle in between her bones, she would develp arthritis in about 10 years after the surgery. Ouch too.

So when we picked Brandon up from school and he asked how appt went, Kyra said:
- Well, they took my x-rays and it did not hurt and they gave me free crayons because I knew who our president was and they said they can either ob...ob..observe me or shave my leg off.

I could not help it. I could not stop laughing. No, no, nobody would shave her leg off. It is kind of funny to see what they understand from a conversation. You never know :)