Ari's Halfway Done!!!

Alright.. so I'm finally ready to write this blog post.

It's probably because I've been under the weather, but it has felt very daunting to write about this visit, and especially to get photos ready for it, until today. I am feeling much better today. = )

So, Ari just had his fourth helmet checkup on Tuesday. It went very well!

The specialist began by ooo-ing and ah-ing about how great Ari's scalp looks. I am serious (and anyone of you who has seen it recently will agree) it looks almost 100% better! That anti-fungal cream really did the job!

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post, but Ari's doctor said that cradle cap is actually a fungus and that the awful red, raw mess under his helmet was actually a horrible case of cradle cap! I was fascinated and dumb struck. I had no idea cradle cap was fungal. She said she was not surprised that his cradle cap got worse under the helmet since it is warm, dark and moist.. the perfect fungus growing environment.

I digress.. so after ooo-ing and ah-ing, the specialist adjusted his helmet since his head has grown more and it was again getting too tight in some areas. The adjustment took about 15-20 minutes, so while she was in the back room, Ari played with the zipper on my sweater and in his stroller for a bit.







































When the specialist got back, she showed me that she also applied a felt-like medical bandage circle over that silver button that has been chaffing Ari's skin and creating blisters (I don't know the actual name of it). Up until now, we have had to try and get gauze under that area each time we put the helmet on. But with that circular piece of material bandage over it, it's no problem now! Huzzah!

Next she showed me the original mold of Ari's head which she had also brought back with her! If you recall from my post "Hooded and Scanned", they made this mold (which I had never got to see before now) by scanning an electronic picture of his skull onto a computer with a scanner. They then fitted the CranioCap to the mold of his skull before Ari got to wear it the first time. Here are some pictures of the mold. The one on the left is a front/anterior view (the writing would be the left side of Ari's head) and the one on the right is a top/superior view (the flat part on top of the picture being the back of his head).



















She measured the original mold of Ari's head to see what the dimensions were, and then measured Ari's head to see what his head was measuring now. He kept on trying to get her name tag. She thought that was hilarious. = D




















After she finished measuring, she told me that Ari's head has grown about a half a centimeter on the sides and a little over a centimeter in the back since we started the treatment! She said this is great, because it means that most of the growth has been in the back where his head is flat!

She informed me that Ari is about halfway done with his treatment now, which means that we only have about 7 more weeks to go unless they decide to extend the treatment at the end. She said it is unlikely that they will extend it since Ari is getting so mobile now and spending much less time on his back. She even said that towards the end of the treatment she may have us do a modified schedule again, which would involve him only wearing the helmet when he is in reclined positions, such as for naps, changing, nursing or in the car seat. Something like that.

So, yeah! It went really well. However, a couple centimeters growth still didn't sound like that big of a deal to me, so later that day I took some pictures of Ari's head, so that I could get a better picture of how much the treatment has been helping. I've included both the before and halfway pictures here so you can see them for yourself! Do you think it's working?... = D


P.S. I will try to do a post with cute pictures from Halloween soon. No guarantees. = )