Off to look for Zebras

There is an old theory in medicine that when you hear hoof beats you look for horses not zebras. More likely then not the hoof beats are going to be caused by horses and rarely zebras. In medicine, they assume a cough is from a cold and not some rare disease becuase it probably is just a cold. They think spots are problably chicken pox and not some rare skin disease.

It works for typically developing kids. However, Lauren is not. She's already riding on a zebra, not on a horse. Since we are starting out with something abnormal, when I call the doctor to inquire about her obsessive chewing I don't get a statement of "just try to distract her". I get a "let's bring her in IMMEDIATELY. It could be a metabolic problem."

As soon as I heard the word metabolic, I jumped to blood test. As soon as I thought blood test, I jumped to Cat Scan. As soon as I thought Cat Scan, I jumped to blown veins. As soon as I thought of blown veins, I thought of last week. As soon as I remembered last week, I thought this is not going to be good.

I've called her neurologist. I remembered that they did a whole bizarre syndrome work up (obviously not the medical term for it but they looked for every bizarre syndrome under the sun and found nothing) over a year ago. I'm sure that must have included something metabolic. Hopefully, the nurse can fax something to put her family doctor's mind at ease.

Otherwise, after the appointment, we'll be headed to the lab at Children's. They are getting pretty fond of us. I've nixed the doctor drawing blood due to a recent bad results of gettting a vein. Lauren makes pretty strong assoications with events and I don't want her to make that type of assoication at her family doctor. I'd rather save that for the speicalist.