The CHOP update....

So Monday morning (January 23) I bundled up my little guy.....

and walked from our hotel in Philly (there was no room at the Ronald McD house) past the University of Pennsylvania Law School (right across the street) and past the U of Penn Medical Center to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which is the oldest Children's Hospital in the US, founded in 1855....

I think they have modernized it a bit....

We met with Dr. Campbell for our VEPTR consultation (see veptr.com for cool details on what this procedure entails) and I was so impressed by his kindness and the team they have at CHOP. Henry is definitely a candidate for this procedure...I saw "before and after" procedure x-rays of several children's spines and the results are simply amazing!!

When I told Dr. C we are also concerned about Henry's joints, he called in his colleague Dr. D, the "joint displacement" specialist. Long story short, it looks like Dr. D can do surgery to reconstruct Henry's knees and straighten his feet and improve the tendons in his legs!!

The next day we saw Dr. M, the pulmonary specialist, and he wants to have a sleep study done on Henry here in Chicago to see if he needs more oxygen at night, which would probably help him to grow and gain weight more quickly. So we will try to get that scheduled before Henry's cleft palate surgery on February 17!

We will return to CHOP for about a week sometime in April for a whole battery of tests on Henry, some of which he will need to be sedated for. We will likely bring all the children with an have our family vacation in this wonderful historical city!

While the medical side of the trip was all kinds of awesome, I did have an unpleasant few hours on Monday night as I lost my almost new iPhone (pouring rain and pitch dark, getting baby in cab, trying to fold stroller, people streaming out of hospital bumping into us.....)

But my friend Nicole and her boys Marshall and Jack waited for us at the restaurant and buoyed our spirits with with good fellowship and conversation and general little boy cuteness!! Oh, she also bought me my dinner and a much needed cosmo after my phone trauma -thanks hon! I owe you on our next visit!

New iPhone in hand we headed back to Chicago Tuesday afternoon (thanks Miracle Flights for Kids!) and jumped right back into the craziness that is everyday life with 7 children....

and I wouldn't have it any other way.