hez in ur brainz

Today R2 and I went to the neurologist, for a follow-up visit for his last seizure, 3 or 4 months ago. The neuros name is Dr. Jean Baptiste LePichon, and that name is RULE. I usually sing a little Le Poisson in my head whilst I wait. Le Poisson, le poisson, how I love le poisson... and so on. Dr LePichon is great. He seems to be on a continual quest to find out what is going on in Richy's brain, literally.

I love the hospital here, the doctors, the clinics. It's all just world-class and everybody seems to want to help R2. This is amazing, because in Houston we had kinda settled into maintenance mode, only dealing with issues on a crisis basis. So here, they are testing for all kinds of stuff, plus we got the new eye last year, just in general being very proactive. I heart it.

So, as usual we wait in the waiting room, which is always an interesting experience. We shared the room today with a very, very large boy in a wheelchair and his fairly large granny, also in a wheelchair, and various other family members, not in wheelchairs.

People are so interesting. All 4 adults kept Caleb pretty busy rolling around the waiting room to make space for more patients...he was pretty longsuffering, and barking at Caleb might be pretty much par for the course. Most of the time, you don't know what's wrong with someone, and you can't ask. (although, when R2 was little, rude people would frequently say "What's wrong with him?" in the checkout line at the grocery store. I always wanted to answer, "what's wrong with you?")

And then we waited in the office, gave the same ol' info to the decoy doc, and then finally Jean Baptiste LePichon came in for his turn. He is such an interesting guy. He talks to Richy with such kindness and warmth, and then he is much more reserved with me. Today he was doing his exam, and was kinda hanging out at the left eye, when I mentioned that it was prosthetic. He was so interested, and then he went and got a resident and brought him in for a pop quiz. "Don't tell him anything!" he told me . So the resident examined him and then said that the left eye didn't move quite right, and the pupil was non-responsive. I was laughing, and Dr LP congratulated him... it was great because I used to be cohorts with doctors in the NICU, and it was fun to do that again.

Just to contribute to the overuse of the word "interesting" today, I'll say it again. He suggested something interesting- that possibly R2's seizures, and physical issues are a genetic abnormality, rather than cerebral-palsy based. It's something he wants to explore, since his study of R2's brain scans don't show clear reasons for his issues.

So we went down to the lab and had blood taken, and that was traumatic, so we went and had a Happy Meal, and then he laughed all the way home. That's why they call it a Happy Meal.