Thumbs Up

So, if you've known me for very long at all, you'll recall my story of my son Jack's special congenital "gifts."

He has two conjoined big toes on each foot. It's like one ginormous big toe, complete with two toenails and two bones, but all smushed together.

He has a thumb that doesn't bend.

I won't go into the whole story behind his birth, but basically from about the 18th week of pregnancy, we were told that he might not live too long after birth or he might be perfectly fine. They just didn't know. During that God-awful prenatal testing, he tested at high risk for Trisomy 18, which is fatal.

But after an amniocentesis and a very stressful few weeks, we were told he had a chromosomal abnormality which wasn't necessarily Trisomy 18, but could represent a translocation of the genes, which would still be Trisomy 18th which could still result in fetal death or death immediately after birth.

Confusing right? I know.

Amazing I still remember all the details of that part...

Thanks to the internet, which was a new thing to me then, I had plenty of time to dwell on all of it.

Long (very long) story short, he ended up being born perfectly healthy, weighing in at a whopping 8# 14 oz...

He had a few extras here and there and a thumb that didn't bend correctly. But to be perfectly honest with you, considering we were looking at most certain death from Trisomy 18, we kissed those toes and loved that thumb.

Perhaps if we had gone into it expecting nothing to be wrong, we might have been devastated to have a baby with 12 toes, but it was a rejoicing day. Trust me.

Jack had surgery on his thumb when he was 7 months old in an attempt to release a tendon to make his thumb move; this surgery was not successful.

What 7 month old needs two opposable thumbs anyway?

Jack learned to use his thumb just the way it was. It's a long standing joke that this is the reason he always beats us at video games...he can keep that thumb straight for longer periods of time than the rest of us.

For several months Jack's been complaining about his thumb. I kinda blew it off. Nice. I know. The outside of his "special" thumb has a hard knot on it.

When he said something to me about it yesterday, I looked at it and realized it had grown a lot. And now it was painful to touch.

You can just email me your "mother of the year awards"... Thankyouverymuch!

I called the pediatrician's office to make an appointment. I tried to explain that it wasn't an emergency. I mean I've known about it for 6 months for heaven sakes. I can't very well pretend that I need to be seen immediately...

They get us in immediately.

The visit started with Bobbie, our wonderful pediatrician's gruff nurse, coming in and standing back to back with Jack to see who was taller. We have gone to that office since Jordan was little. Jack was taller... by a hair.

The Dr. was concerned. He mentioned a bony tumor... said they're usually benign... needs an xray... may be heading back to the hand surgeon who saw him when a baby. We will wait and see.

And so we wait on the results of the Xray. Of course we end up going on the afternoon before a huge snow storm is projected to hit. I called Jeff to tell him what we were up to and he asked, "Why did you decide to take him today of all days?"

My reply? "Because today's the day I thought about it."

Hopefully, we will hear back tomorrow.

Please pray for speedy results of the xray and a quick and easy fix.

My boy needs his video game thumb in prime condition.