Update On Nathan

As many of you know on Wednesday Nathan had an appointment with his rheumatologist. Everything went well after we finally found the place! Turns out that new roads our not always able to be found by Map Quest, Google Maps or even a GPS. When this happens your pretty much screwed! So of course you call the Doctors office to try and get directions but instead you'll most likely receive a message saying "I'm sorry we are currently receiving a high volume of calls. Your call is important to us so please stay on the line and we will be with you momentarily." So there I am sitting in a Silver Mountaineer on my cell phone with two young children taking in the scenery at the local gas station in the middle of god knows where! Now, one would think that the classical music playing softly in my ear while I continue to wait on hold would calm and relax anyone right? Not quite the case when you consider the local scenery consist of cars that should be considered illegal to drive due to the fact that they were held together by bondo and duct tape and had trash bags for windows! Every where you looked there were questionable people! I knew nothing about this place except for the fact that me in a silver mountaineer on a cell phone with two young children did not belong there. This whole time in my head all I can think is how this message I have now heard a dozen times should actually read "your call is important to us so please stay on the line and continue to wait unless your about to be car jacked and mugged then please hang up and dial 911". It was SUPER SCARY!

Now that that's out of the way lets get back to Nathan! As I said earlier before the rampage his appointment went well.

• Good news - we finally have an official diagnosis
• Bad news - as we suspected it is juvenile arthritis
• Good news/Bad news - He has a 50% chance of outgrowing it therefor a 50% chance he will continue to have problems as an adult

The naproxen alone was helping some of the inflammation but he is still very stiff and sore mainly in the morning. So Dr. Spalding has decided that the next step would be to start him on sulfasalazine this is a disease modifying anti rheumatic drug. The purpose of this drug is to slow down or even stop the progression of the disease. Nathan will be going back to hydro therapy once a week and then go back to see the doctor in February. If this treatment does not work there is other drugs they can try but right now we our hopeful so we will only cross that bridge if need to.

One more bit of good news-juvenile arthritis is not hereditary so it is very rare for more then one child in a family to have it.