Tommy's update

I haven't done so well with getting all four kids updates out in four days, but so goes planning! 

Tommy is almost 5 1/2 years old, he is LOVING his third year of early intervention preschool and is just the most animated person in our family.

He plays TOPS soccer on Wednesday evenings at our local sportsplex and although the task of kicking the ball is fairly lost on him, he enjoys scurrying around smiling and checking out his friends, the astro turf and giggling.

Although Tommy is non verbal and has limited sign language, he gets his point across and is up to three sign combinations.  In addition to his SLP time at preschool, he goes once every other week to a local Speech center to learn more.

Tommy had two procedures done this year which is far less than previous years.  The procedures were both to check his ears.  One was to verify that he didn't need ear tubes and the second procedure was a sedated BAER hearing test which he passed with flying colors.

During the procedures, our local pediatrician had asked Seattle Children's to draw Tommy's annual bloodwork and again this year his platelet count has fallen.  Since he has Down syndrome and Polysaccaride Antibody Deficiency syndrome, we are concerned he has Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome or something else (which I really can't bring myself to even say until our pediatrician mentions it more than she has already, trust me, the L word is on her radar).  So in 4 months we are having a complete bloodwork done again and assure that the L word isn't happening and make sure those platelets that he has are still large and haven't shrunk like Wiskott-Aldrich.  I'm not sure what the comorbidity with Hirschsprung's disease is with all this immunity issues, but there you have our little medical miracle in a paragraph!

We simply LOVE loving Tommy and he is just such a precious kid to us, we are so lucky!  Just like all of our kids.