For those of you who don't know, Tracey was diagnosed Sept 07 with a hemangioma on her left arm. That's an abnormal growth of your blood vessels. When you search hemangioma on the internet usually you will find pictures of kids with horrible red, raised lesions various places on their bodies. Tracey's is under her skin and the only indication is knots under her skin. If you feel around, you can feel hard little bumps that they say is calcification. (They showed up on the x-ray and the PA actually asked me if we'd been hunting lately! Ya, I shot my daughter with the shotgun and am lying to cover it up! What a moron. I think I've posted about her before.)
Anyway, we finally ended up seeing a doctor at UNM-H in Albuquerque who diagnosed it for us. She's been in contact with surgical team in Boston (Vascular Anomalies Center at the Children's Hospital in Boston). We take Tracey back every six months to get it checked. Yesterday was one of those checkups.
As we were waiting in the room, the secretary came in apologizing and said that we really didn't need to make the trip up to Albuquerque (don't forget...we live in Silver City...4.5 hours away!!!). Fabulous...and why didn't she call me and tell me this before??? Anyway, she had a questionaire from Boston for me to fill out and then the doctor looked at Tracey's arm. They told me that the surgical team meets every month and at that time they will review Tracey's file (photos, MRI, etc) and determine whether or not she needs to have surgery on it. I will get into the details of surgery later...if/when that's what is determined that we need to do.
So we're back to playing the waiting game...as we've been for a year and a half. The last six months or so it hasn't been bothering her much. Before, it would bother her in the mornings or if it got hit. Except for when she had the IV in that arm when she was sick around Thanksgiving time, we haven't had really any problems with it.
So we wait....
4 comments:
Is that something that will continue for the rest of her life? Does it only happen is certain palces, or could it be anywhere in the body? I hope all goes well for her (and you). Good Luck!! :)
GRRR!! Hopefully you got some time to shop while you were in ALB. You can tell what is most important to me. Jill
Jill- you crack me up. I actually debated on whether or not I should blog about the chance to do some shopping (and not being too ticked off about the wasted trip). We spent some time at Barnes & Noble and then we wandered the mall for awhile. I bought Tracey a hoodie from Aeropostale. That was it for our shopping.
Tiffany- If it's not causing trouble, I think they will leave it alone, but if it does cause trouble then they have to operate. They say that some people are born with them and most never know they are there and yes, they can occur anywhere in the body. I have a friend who is in her 50's and recently discovered she had one near her spine, but it's not causing problems.
Yeah, the shopping is a nice side line. I did a bit of that when I was stuck in El Paso with Mom in the hospital last year. Actually I had to shop a little because my 3 or 4 days turned into 10 days and I was running out of essentials. But it's still a pain to go all that way to fill out a form. Alice
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