Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 March 2004 09:40:42
As regular readers of this wiblog probably know, daughter has inherited a condition which is relatively rare (affecting about 1 in 3000), and which, as it happens, comes in two types. Last week, son, apparently, dislocated his thumb. Wife took him to the doctor on Friday afternoon; she advised that he needed a trip to the Sick Kids, where they would attend to the injury - it needed further attention. Meanwhile, daughter was receiving her regular treatment at her hospital. Wife phoned, just as daughter and I were picking up fish suppers on the way home.
I don't know if I made the right decision. We could have waited until Saturday morning before taking son to the hospital, but we thought that the place might be less busy on a Friday evening. Wife had planned an evening out with a friend, so daughter, son and I ate our fish suppers, and set off for the Sick Kids.
What happened there still strikes me as slightly bizarre. The doctor who examined son found that he could bend son's thumb back past it being straight. He sent us for an X-Ray, saying that he would check the textbooks in the meantime. On our return, he told us that there is a condition which affects a few people where there is something wrong with the collagen in their bodies. I read over his shoulder, from a computer printout, the phrase Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. He said that the X-Rays were fine, and that he would refer us either to an orthopaedic person, or to a general paediatrician (and then sent us along to the receptionist to make the appointment - her response was "but they're all paediatricians here").
What is mysterious is that just a few months ago we took son to see an orthopaedic specialist, on account of his sore foot. She found nothing unusual about his joints. Perhaps if I'd remembered that visit on this occasion the doctor would have chosen a different track.
Anyway, the doctor kindly gave us the printout he'd been reading, and I have learnt that Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is inherited, that it affects about 1 in 20000, and seems to come in about 8 different types. Some types are dominant, some are recessive, and one is x-linked. I have also learnt, since, that my cousin and one of his sons have the ability to bend their thumbs back further than they should.
By the time we got home on Friday evening, we were tired, daughter, especially. I had reckoned that I could just about manage the trip. I hadn't really considered how tough it would be for daughter. But over the week-end, thankfully, she seems to have recovered.