Growth Hormone Deficiency.

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Forum -> Parenting our children -> School age children

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lilacdreams ↓

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 10:48 am

my 7.5 yo dd is being checked to see why she won't stay on her growth curve (she's already under the last line)
we've ruled out some genetic stuff (bh bh) but now Doc wants to check her level of GH.

He is sending us to hospital on a 8 hour fast where they then inject Clodinine into her adn check her GH levels every half hour, for 2 hours. Doc didnt have time to answer any questions (obnoxious I know, but he is considered the best in his field in Israel)

Has anyone done this? Any side effects I should know about? He said it can make her sleepy - anything else, longterm?
thanks

cheryl4kids

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 4:07 pm

We just finished testing my daughter's GH levels (9 yrs old) because she stopped growing. We did 3 tests (here in USA) - - 2 tests where she had to fast and then had blood drawn at different intervals, and then she had an MRI. The only bad part about the tests where the fasting and the waiting (bring lot of books, activities). She did "fail" both GH tests (and the MRI was BH good), so we started her 1 week ago on the growth hormone shots.

email me if you want to know anything more!

amother ↓

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 4:22 pm

no experience in this area on a personal level.....only on an insurance level (I work in that industry). I will only give you some financial advice: make sure you have prescription coverage that has no limitations. depending on the GH you get, they can be over $80,000 a year (I know nutropin is pretty high up there on the expensive list) and there are many policies nowadays that limit the Rx coverage and some will not cover certain growth hormones. obviously your kids health comes first, I'd just like to help you prevent your having to go into bankruptcy...so please work with your insurance company....make sure everything is preauthorized and if you doctor needs to make some calls, stay on his case to make those calls.

hatzlacha

↑ lilacdreams ↓

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 4:48 pm

thankyou both of you, cheryl I'll PM you. Not sure how it works in Israel with my insurance but at this point we're not even sure we want to go the GH route...
do either of you know about this drug they inject into her before the testing?

↑ amother

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 6:39 pm

I assume that's the only symptom? My son had stopped growing for 2 years (yeah, no physicals, bad mommy) around his bar mitzvah, turned out to be due to Crohns.

↑ lilacdreams ↓

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 6:41 pm

what are crohnes symptoms? how do they test for it?

PinkFridge ↓

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 6:48 pm

Bloody diarrhea or constipation, anemia, for starters. In my son's case, he was one day very spacey (hadn't know about his bloody D). His iron was tested right away, and the dr. wanted us to come back in a month. We put two and two together - stomach distress and anemia and insisted on further GI testing - bloodwork, stool testing, and eventually, scoping. (Later we added one more two to the mix - the growth issue.)

Probably a red herring and not something to focus on, just thought I;d put it out there.

↑ PinkFridge

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 6:49 pm

As you can tell, I went by amother before. Not a biggie for me, not sure why I did it.

↑ lilacdreams

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 6:50 pm

ok bh never seen any of that. Refuah shelaima to your son.

jayne

Sun, Aug 23 2009, 8:25 pm

Been there, too. My 9-year-old twins have been on growth hormone for over a year and are showing remarkable progress. B"H for it!

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