The recap

Friday was both amusing and disappointing. Jay took Allan to have the spots on his head biopsied. You know, the ones that appeared right as he left the hospital last time and immediately before the eye problem developed. Those spots on the top of his head. The dermatologist here looked at them and got out her swab to clean the area before taking a sample and lo and behold -- off they came. Yep. That's right. The spots were betadine from where they had tried to take blood from the bean before he came home. Now before any one jumps to any hasty conclusions about how clean we are, let me say that the bean had had his little head washed on numerous occasions since coming home (you don't want to cast any aspersions on how well Flora takes care of her boys). However, since we weren't using alcohol swabs, the spots remained. We felt pretty silly, of course, but not nearly as silly as the head of dermatology at UC should feel (along with his two residents) because he was absolutely confident that they were nevus. And so were they (as if they would have said otherwise). Any way, that's the amusing part. The disappointing part is that we were hoping that we would have confirmation that Allan has JXG so that we could move on with a plan of action. No such luck. The ophthalmologists have emailed all sorts of friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc. with pictures and descriptions of Allan's eye and every one has an opinion but no one can say definitively what we've got and what we ought to do about it. Our main doc managed to get through to one of the country's pre-eminent docs in this field on Friday and she has agreed to look at the photos and records and see if she can help out. In the meanwhile, we keep on keeping on.

Griffith has been an absolute angel. He has gone from being the World's Angriest Infant to Mr. Chuckles. He laughs all the time and at everything. When he isn't laughing, he's smiling. He can still go from that to furious if you let him get hungry or, God forbid, wet or dirty, but as long as you respond quickly to fix the situation, he is willing to get over it. Mostly he likes to sit up in your lap and hang out. He is very entertained by the flow of conversation. Today he spent quite awhile hanging out with a lobster rattle (go with it) that he held tightly in his right hand. It was all big fun, except for the way he kept banging himself in the face with itl.

Not to be outdone, Big Al took over the lobster rattle this afternoon and he, likewise, spent a fair amount of time shaking it and banging himself in the face with it. I should have bought two of those things.


Allan goes back to the eye doctor in the a.m. We will update you when we know something.