Full disclosure

In the interests of living up to the blog title, I leave you with this - my second son (known as Thud), the newly 8-year-old who was born with congenital heart defects, was recently diagnosed with scoliosis as well. Being my son he has decided that this is a much bigger thing than it actually is and that this explains why his handwriting is crap.


What is actually going on is that he really screwed up his body when he was building it in the first place. Not only did he get the Ikea instructions for his heart, he also got the Ikea instructions for his spine. His heart was missing a vital component (the tricuspid valve, causing tricuspid atresia), he got the two arteries leaving his heart the wrong way around (transposition of the great arteries), and when he was building his spine he forgot to put all of one piece in (hemivertebrae at L1 - NB despite that link my son is clearly not a bulldog). According to my research both of these problems occur at roughly the same point of foetal development, and neither of them are a) my fault or b) caused by my older son having measles at that point of my pregnancy. Sometimes, in my blue hours, I have my doubts about the second, but there's nothing I can do about it. See, mountain out of a molehill.

Also according to a few Internet friends this combination, together with his retractile testes (there is nothing that isn't on the Internet these days, I really am sorry Thud if you find this in the future!) are commonly found in people with genetic syndrome that hasn't yet been diagnosed. Great. Another thing to worry about. Although I have ruled out all the ones that include mental retardation because no-one could argue with me and his older brother the way he does if they had any kind of slow mental processes.