Follow up

We had our follow-up appointment for Shep’s tics today. (Six months later.) We went to the new campus of our local children’s hospital, and, omigosh, for any of you that are local and might find yourself in need of a children’s hospital—IT IS BEAUTIFUL. Seriously, I’ve considered going back on a random Thursday because I think we could kill a few hours there happily.

The whole building is bright and full of windows. Waiting areas are filled with televisions and murals with blinking lights, carts with loads of books, tiles on the floor that squish colors when you walk on them. And in the lobby? Starbucks!

So well done.

Okay, back to our appointment. We had hardly any wait time anywhere. The staff was incredibly kind. We loved the doctor. He was friendly and fabulous with Shep. We talked about where we are and where we’re headed. Because of the new electronic system, he was able to pull up Shep’s CAT scan and said everything looked clear.

Bottom line? We’ll just wait and see. Shep’s tic is nowhere near as bad as it was that first weekend it began. We only see it every now and then, mostly when he’s tired or stressed. He developed a clicking in his throat for about a week about a month ago. But other than that, he seems very normal.

They could go away, but I suspect he’ll have tics on and off his whole life, but I doubt any of them will ever be bad enough to merit medication.

But in the meantime, I feel like we’re in excellent hands. We’ve been given the key to the secret back door, an email address and nurse’s phone number, so we can get an appointment quickly if we ever feel we need one. But at this point we don't even have a follow-up appointment. The doctor told us to just get to go back to living our normal life. Which sounds pretty good.