Precocious puberty

Just when we thought that Dani was going to finally behave, she pulled the rug out from under us once again.  I tell you what, that girl, can make a person worry.  I am going to attribute all my gray hair to her, and yes I have gray hair.  Just ask my sister, she yanked a long one out on Sunday for me.  I would think that 10 more took its place since then…

Back to Dani…

I think you might remember me posting on her website, that we notice such body odor for her about 9 months or so ago.  We were told to watch for other signs of puberty, yes I said puberty.  My baby isn’t even 5 years old yet and we have to watch for puberty.  Time past and Dan and I were chalking it up to Dani just being smelly.  That was until about 2 weeks ago. 

We all went back to Sisseton for my brother’s shipping out party.  He is doing a tour in Afghanistan.  I had changed Dani’s diaper and my heart stopped.  Why?  Because we just got another sign of Dani hitting puberty.  How are you supposed to act when your parents house is full of relatives?  Like  everything else, I blinked back my pain and went back out with a smile on my face.  All the time, I was worried on what this actually meant for Dani.  Why?  Why does this have to happen to her?

Last Thursday, Dani met with an Endocrinologist.  Yet another specialist to add to ever growing medical family.  He was a very nice doctor that actually had bedside manners.  He even cracked a few jokes.

He talked about puberty and the stages are body odor (mentally, I said check), breast tissue (ah, negative ghost rider), pubic hair (damn, check).  But it is when kids under the age 8 hit some of these milestones, causes concern for everyone.  He really didn’t want to attribute her brain damage to causing this, even though we already have received conflicting information on this.  His thoughts were:

1.  It is just one of those things that happen that can’t be explained.  It just happened.  Just like her arthrogryposis. (I am thinking at this point, we have a winner here because this most explains Dani in a nutshell)
2. Hereditary.  He asked if I heard of this in the family.  I told him he was very funny for asking this because no family member came forward with anything when Dani was born with arthrogryposis much less early puberty.  So, I am going to say no.
3. This next one let the wind from my sails.  On rare cases, it could be a tumor.  (Again, I thought with Dani’s luck, this is going to be the diagnosis!)

At this point Dani underwent a bone age of her right hand.  That just entails an x-ray of her hand.  Today we completed blood work.  We won’t know for about 2 weeks what the next step is for Dani.

We discussed “stopping” this for Dani.  He explained the “ethical” debates out there and really didn’t let me know what side of the debate he falls on.  Also, I have yet to do my research if we put her on hormone therapy, what kind of side effects there are.  I am kinda still in shock because I can’t wrap my head around this situation.  Maybe it’s the fact that she is going through something her older sister is just starting.

This just isn’t getting any easier…

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/precocious-puberty/DS00883