Autumn is here!

It finally feels like Fall and I love it! Especially because my huge craving lately is pumpkin - pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin cake, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin! I could eat it all day long -haha!!

And this little baby is kicking me to death from the inside! All day long - thump, thump, thump. All night long thump, thump, thump. I love feeling it and I keep telling her that her daddies are going to have to sign her up for soccer when she is older because she is such a good kicker!

And yesterday was Shayla's appointment at Children's Hospital. It went well...although we don't really have any more answers now than we did before. I'm going to cheat and just copy my update from somewhere else:

The doctor's at Children’s were so nice and very helpful. Instead of just saying "no, it can't be that" they explained WHY it can't be this or that. Not her thyroid because she is 50th percentile height and weight and she wouldn't be if her thyroid were out of whack. Not Zinc deficiency because her nails would be brittle and not growing. He also discounted the virus theory by saying the virus that will kill hair follicles would be accompanied by a very high fever generally lasting several days and Shayla hasn’t had a fever in almost a year…and that wasn’t even one I would consider very high. I’m not going to go into all the theories he discounted but you get the idea. It really was nice to have a doctor explain everything to me.

He asked a million questions and looked over her blood test results from the pediatrician. He said the ONLY thing he can come up with that hasn’t been tested for is heavy metal poisoning. He asked if we spray for mice and I told him no, but we do for ants. He said ant spray doesn’t have the same chemicals as mouse / rat poison so it wouldn’t be that. He asked if we had any access to thalamine – uhhh…it hasn’t been produced since the 70s, so no. However, his concern was that our house is so old – he said that something we had in the basement could have come in contact with some rat poison or something that had thalamine on it years ago. If we brought that item up into the house and Shayla had contact with it, it could have caused her hair loss. It’s a long shot but he didn’t feel comfortable not testing for it. The good news is if it was something like heavy metal poisoning she obviously isn’t in contact with it any more since her hair is growing back in and she’s perfectly healthy otherwise. The bad news if it was poison is that we have to try and figure out what / where she came in contact with it.

He said if this test comes back negative, he honestly will have no answer. He said this stuff does happen for no reason and it’s frustrating but the good news is that it should never affect her again in her life.

So we’ll get the blood test results this week and either have an answer or forever wonder why she lost all her hair and just hope it never happens again.

I do have to say though – being at Children’s was sobering. It made me realize just how lucky I am that my only problem is that my daughter’s hair is falling out. I almost felt like a baby with a petty problem after watching all those kids walk around with their heads shaved and staples going across their skull, with their trach tubes, with obvious chemo hair loss, etc.

So, that's pretty much it - by the end of this week we will either have an answer or not but we are at the end of the road for testing. Her hair is growing back in (and much, much lighter than it was before it fell out) so I guess that's what matters. If it wasn't growing back, I would probably be much more concerned.

And a big thank you to everyone who called, emailed, and messaged me yesterday. I truly felt all the love and support for Shayla. <3