Well I would like to say the weather has vastly improved since the dreadful bank holiday weekend but it hasn't. It is still wet and miserable. I have had enough of the ceaseless rain now and am looking forward to the start of summer. I am fed up of sitting in my office at work shivering because the organisation determines each year what day the heating will go off irrespective of how hot or cold the temperature might be. For goodness sake, we had better weather in February and March! We have one pitiful electric heater between all of us on my floor so we only manage to get the temperature barely tolerable before someone whisks it away in an attempt to defrost their office.
Anyway, yesterday I had to get up at the crack of dawn to get my boys up, dressed and breakfasted in time to make it accross Brighton in rush hour traffic to get to the Children's Hospital and try and find a parking space (they are nearly impossible to find). Seb has been complaining for several months now about pain in his knees so we had been referred to the Orthopaedic clinic to find out what the problem was.
Fortunately as we were first to arrive (although I noticed several other people who came shortly after us had the same appointment time!) we were first in the queue to be sent down to X-ray. Seb was a little bit concerned about whether the X-ray might hurt and seemed to have some idea in his head, from a film he had watched, that there was a possibility his leg might explode. Having reassured him that his legs were definitely not going to explode he nervously followed the radiographer into the X-ray room. I had to stand out in the corridor because I had Nat with me but I could see through the porthole window in the door that they took several shots of each knee from all directions.
Next we were sent in to see the consultant who asked Seb to remove his trousers and to lay on the bed while he examined his knees. It was funny to see how horrified Seb was by being asked to take off his trousers - it wasn't so long ago that he would run naked about the house without a care in the world. But now he is a teenager and clearly becoming more self concious. I was amused to watch as he stretched his school sweatshirt down as far as he could to cover up the tops of his legs!
The consultant confirmed that Seb's knee caps are very loose and flexible and are rather mal-aligned which he thought could be improved by physiotherapy but then he surprised me when he announced that he was very concerned about the fact that Seb's legs won't go flat.
I was really shocked to realise that I have never noticed that when Seb stretches his legs out there is a huge gap behind each knee (where they should have been touching the bed). Didn't I feel like an awful and neglectful mother! I asked whether this (ie the knee problem not my poor parenting) was caused by muscular tightness but the consultant thought it more likely there is something in the knee cap preventing his legs from straightening out.
The upshot is that we have to wait six weeks to be referred for some knee scans and then another couple of weeks to go back and find out what the scans showed. The joy of the NHS waiting list!
The doctor wasn't even going to look at the X-rays until I suggested it - I did rather wonder what was the point of taking them but heigh ho!
Seb got down off the bed and declared that the doctor had got him worried now!
I took Seb back to school but later that day he came home having injured one of his toes in drama class - it looks a little red and swollen but I really couldn't face going back to the hospital twice in one day and anyway they don't seem to do anything to treat broken toes these days, just seem to leave them to heal naturally. Hopefully it is just a sprain and nothing too serious! My only reservation is recalling the time ten years ago when my nephew Chris injured himself after jumping into a ball pool at Centre Parcs and I did my usual 'reassuring auntie' trick and told him he was absolutely fine and there was no way his foot was broken. He returned from hospital later that evening with a confirmed fracture and has never let me forget it since - oops!!
Seb has also managed to bruise his spine from doing "flying forward rolls" - whatever they are! Because he has no fat on him, his vertebrae stick out and he now has big painful bruises around three or four of the nobbles on his back.
So not only does Seb now have a catalogue of injuries, aches and pains to whinge about but I am surely not far off risking being accused of battering my kid!
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