The real reason I decided to start a blog is because of this little girl who is no longer a little girl at all. This picture was taken in the Spring of 2000. Right after her well child visit with her pediatrician - her great pediatrician - Dr. Booher. She was all kinds of cute. She was three years old and T.I.N.Y. Not that we were alarmed, though, she doesn't come from a tall family. You can't expect mountains out of mole hills, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and all that. Luckily we had a doctor who didn't write her smallness off quite so quickly. When she went for her three year old well visit he asked us to come back in six months instead of one year to do a followup on her growth. When we came back after this six months she had barely grown any. Most kids grow several inches a year and she was measuring in at less than 1/2 an inch in a year.
He referred us to an endocrinologist, Dr. Nickels, at Children's Hospital. The first thing Dr. Nickels did is order an initial bone age x-ray and a blood test. Her bone age x-ray and blood test indicated that there needed to be further testing done. That further testing was a grueling day for her - and us. This test was a 4 hour stim test. She was given two different stimulants and they tested her blood every 30 minutes for four hours. By the end of the four hours and eight blood draws we were all crazy! (Miraculously she did not cry until the last one - she had finally had enough). What was determined in this test was that she was producing very little growth hormone. Not enough to sustain normal growth. The next test they wanted to do on her was an MRI because this lack of growth hormone production could be caused by a tumor on her pituitary gland or a pituitary gland that was not formed correctly. The MRI showed that her pituitary gland was formed correctly and was producing everything properly EXCEPT FOR GROWTH HORMONE.
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