[Here is the first and second post about the limp if you are catching up.]
I called Doc yesterday and today trying to get an update on Peter's labs, because I didn't see the virtue of patiently waiting for his call in this scenario. He was supposed to call "early" this week and my definition of "early" ended yesterday afternoon.
Anywho, he called me back today and said that all of Peter's labs came back "stone-cold normal". This means that several more things have been excluded, such as the dreaded leukemia (BIG sigh of relief), as well as juvenile arthritis, and any kind of systematic inflammation in Peter's system. It's still possible that there is some local inflammation in his hip, but anything really big would have shown up on the labs.
Doc said that now it's a matter of how much testing to throw at it in an attempt to figure out what is causing the limp, and because it's been going on for three months, if we want to go another step further, he would recommend that it be with a bone scan.
Basically that means putting Peter under, and injecting a radioactive dye into his system that is absorbed into his bones. Then a full body scan would show any "hot" or "cold" spots in his skeletal system. Doc said that he saw a boy with similar symptoms as Peter who had early onset of the Legg Calves Perthes that I mentioned in Update 1. If we do a scan and that is what we find, they would just monitor it every few months to watch for dislocation of the hip.
Marty and I talked about it after the call and we've decided that we are not going to do the bone scan right now.
Peter still doesn't seem to be in any discomfort, and the limp is very slight right now, so we are going to watch and wait and see what happens. Maybe if it's still around in a couple of months it will be worth doing the scan, but right now there doesn't seem to be anything to gain but answers. (And the only thing we could do with those answers would be to watch and wait anyway.)
We also have some homeopathic supplies that a friend of ours gave us (things like epsom salts and essential oil), and we'll try those too and see if it helps to improve things. If it's just something like local inflammation in the hip, those things may be just what he needs.
Oh, and I forgot to mention it in the last update, but we also had him adjusted by our chiropractor and Peter was a little "off", but the adjustment didn't seem to impact the limp at all.
We went to the Provo City Center Temple open house today and Peter was running all over just fine. Here he is spinning in circles. I wish I had footage of a bunch of other 22 month olds running around so that I could compare their gaits. It's so hard to tell how much of a funny walk is just "toddler" and how much is abnormal.
And here's a bonus picture of him using his "tools" after we got home. The picture is blurry but it was too cute not to share.
Sorry that it's sort of an anticlimactic ending (not really that sorry). If you have any insights or ideas that you think we haven't considered yet, please share!
