"Big Doin"s in Little City

Well, I have no medical news to report. Not that I expected any yet... And I haven't had any answers from my agency regarding the extra questions I asked them to try to get answers to from the foster parents.

I did call my sister, S~, who is mom to 5 children, aged 11 to 3. Her first child, J~, was born at 29 weeks, less than 2 pounds. J~ has some medical issues, which she is responding well to treatment for - she has severe allergies, asthma, and she grew very slowly, and stopped growing at the age of 9. Now, at age 11, she is getting growth hormone treatment and is responding very well. (She is very tiny, but, her endocronologist is now quite hopeful he will get her to five feet tall, with 60 months of treatment. Yes, 60 months. Five years.) Cognitively, at age 11, J~ has the reading ability of at least a high school senior. It is very strange to see a child who weighs 38 pounds and who is only 4 feet tall reading To Kill a Mockingbird. She has a deep understanding of some very grown up concepts, which, again, can be very disconcerting.

I didn't actually mean to start talking about my niece J~...I wanted actually to talk about her sister, my other niece, M~. M~ is the reason I called my sister to talk about Tung. I knew M~ had been born a few weeks early, so, I called my sister and asked, when, exactly, M~ had been born. And M~ was born at 35 weeks of pregnancy - the same week that Tung was born. M~ weighed 4 lbs 15 oz, while Tung weighed 5 lbs 1 oz. S~ cannot remember how much M~ weighed when she was 2, but she thinks it was "around 20 pounds." (Can I blame her for not keeping this info in her head? She's got FIVE children. FIVE. She was pregnant or nursing for 8 straight years. Yikes!) M~ is now a very normal and happy 9 year old, albeit a little on the small side. So, Tung is weighing 19.5 pounds right now, at 2years, 4 months. (I know this is small, very small. Just not sure how small...)

So, I am telling myself this is good news - a 35 week pregnancy, birthweight of 5 lbs, can produce a child as normal as M~.

(Incidentally, M~ was born during the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. I remember this, because, on that date, my husband and I were living in Japan, and we had gone to Kyoto because it was a Japanese holiday called "umi no hi" or "ocean day". We watched the Olympics from a real bed, in a Holiday Inn, the only time we slept in an actual bed the whole time we lived in Japan. My mother called me at the hotel and scared the bejeezus out of me when the phone rang, to tell me M~ had been born.) (I have no idea why I am sharing this.)

I've also been doing some research on the Internet on meningitis in infancy. From what I can tell, the biggest complications are death and deafness. Tung is neither dead nor deaf, so, that seems like a good sign. He does not appear to have been delayed in walking or speaking.

Maybe this is child who needs some extra nourishment and a good loving home and he will be okay - small, but okay.

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If you go to this link:
http://www.courttv.com/trials/index.html

And click on the stories underneath the priest, you will see why I say there are "big doins" in my little city. For the first time that anyone knows of, a priest in on trial for the murder of a nun. Our little courthouse is a COMPLETE ZOO. It is a very interesting story, if you are addicted to news about crimes and trials...