Helmet Time

Aiden had his scan for his helmet today. Mixed emotions.

I was surprised, as the doctor at Children's Mercy perscribed the helmet and suggested we go ahead and do it. I get to the appointment expecting the scan and that's it. The doctor at the appointment today said he would give us the information to decide if we wanted to move forward or not. I kind of thought it was a done deal, so this confused me a little bit.

He went ahead and actually measured Aiden's head. We hadn't had any actual measurements at Children's Mercy besides just a 3 out of 4 and 2 out of 4 at our appointments. Those numbers came from the doctor just placing his fingers on Aiden's head. This appointment really helped me a lot today.

The prosthetics doctor took four measurements. The first was two diagonal measurements, making an "X" across the top of the head, which you subtract one from the other. A 0-6 mm difference is mild, 6-12 is moderate, and >12 is severe deformation. He said being in the range of 6-12 is the bubble where you just personally decide if you want to do the helmet or not. I thought to myself, "If he's in that range, maybe we'll go home and talk about what we want to do..." The doctor said they usually have a correction into the 0-4 mm range. Aiden ended up measuring a 13, so helmet it was.

The other two measurements made a plus sign on his head. For some reason you take the ratio of these two numbers. It is supposed to relate to the roundness of the head. Aiden got an 84.5%, where >85% is considered normal.

The scan part was easy. They put this silly sock on Aiden's head which made him look EXACTLY like my baby pictures. The sock is really fitting, and his cheeks puffed out of the front. It was hard not to laugh because he looked so silly. I had to entertain him while the doctor scanned his head with a cashier type scanner, or else I would have snapped a pic on my phone. He then showed me the 3D image of Aiden on the computer. I didn't really realize how much Aiden's hair covers his deformation!

We picked out a yellow helmet.

I plan on putting some MU stickers on it! I'm sure Jason and I will go shopping for stickers for MU stuff or other boy things in a few weeks.

If they're out of yellow coloring, we're getting a blue one... so we'll get some boy stickers for sure.

They did have other designs, but they don't come out very sharp.

Here is the website of the helmet company:
http://www.starbandkids.com/plagio/about_plagio.htm