WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN

In a previous post, we talked about scheduling Jonah for surgery on May 7 to have his thyroid removed.

This is because his Grave's disease or hyPERthyroidism can no longer be controlled by medication.  

And Jonah's body had not started to self-correct which is sometimes what happens after being on the medication.  Jonah has been off the medication since January so his endocrinologist thought self-correcting would have happened by now.  

However, we should have known that Jonah never does anything the way the experts expect things to happen.  

As part of the surgical consult appointment in March, the surgeon had thyroid labs ran just to verify what Jonah's levels are before surgery.  While Jonah's TSH is still low which is expected with hyPERthyroidism, his free T3 and T4 are in the normal range.  Usually with hyPERthyroidism, the free T3 and T4 are high.  

This means there is a very good chance that Jonah is moving into the sub-clinical category of hyPERthyroidism and possibly on his way to being in remission.  Which would mean no surgery!

So in mid-April, we will rerun labs.  If levels continue to be in the sub-clinical range to possibly even normal range, surgery can be cancelled!  Yeah Jonah for possibly fixing this on his own- with a little help from the Lord, of course :)

This would be great news!  Sometimes quirkiness is exactly what works best!

If Jonah's Grave's is in remission, there will still need to be monitoring done to make sure it stays that way.  Also, there will be the question of Jonah's difficulty with focusing and staying on task:  will this get better because the thyroid is functioning normally now?  Of course, we are praying we see an improvement for Jonah in this area.  

And now some photos of the boys playing in the park on one of our beautiful spring days.  I really notice an improvement in what they can do as far on the play equipment since the fall.  They can now slide down the "Batman" pole and swing on the "George of the Jungle" zip line swing.  These are things they were too scared of and not strong enough for last fall.  So much fun for them-even though Ben doesn't look very happy in this 1st photo: