Friday's procedure

Originally we had been scheduled to have Katie's knee injection on Wednesday.  However, once the radiologist and her rheumatologist looked at her jaw MRI from last week, things changed.  They found that Katie has increased synovial fluid on each side of her jaw.  The left side is fairly significant and has enlarged temporomandibular joint space.  Here's what they sent to us in BOLD:

"While there is synovitis in both temporomandibular joints, marked on the left and moderate on the right, the findings appear much more severe on the left, with a short condylar neck and a markedly deformed condylar head with a poorly developed condylar fossa suggesting long-standing inflammation and abnormal development."

Perfect, just what every parent wants to read.  There are a lot of words that I have very little hope of understanding in that paragraph, but even my mathematically centric brain knows what "inflammation and abnormal development" mean.  That damn inflammation has been there long enough to affect the bone and to begin deteriorating tissue. 

They absolutely didn't want to wait and do injections in her jaw later - they wanted it all done at once.  So tomorrow at 1:00, Katie will have steroid injections in both sides of her jaw along with her right knee.  She will still be under general anesthesia. 

Here are her knees today....you can see that the one on the left (her right) is a little larger...about .5 inches larger to be exact.  That's all synovial fluid. 

 

 

Can't get you a picture of her jaw. 

 

Due to the inflammation present in her jaw - they were able to officially label the type of JIA that Katie has.  Ready?  Let's sound it out together....

 

Rheumatoid Factor Negative Polyarticular JIA



Good job.  Now here are some "fun" facts.

• It affects 20% of kids with JIA
• More common in girls
• Affects joints on both sides of the body - including neck and jaw
• Risk of eye disease
• More likely to last into adulthood

So that's it for now - after the injections (in a couple weeks) they want x-rays of her hands and elbows.  If the medications are working we'll see improvement.  If they aren't working, then we move onto injections at home or infusions.  I'm not spending much time thinking about that - one bridge at a time.