Iz has always been clumsy.  As a baby, we chalked it up to infant unsteadiness.  When she fell frequently learning to crawl, we chalked it up to weak arms.  As a walker, new balance.  And then came the age where we expected her to grow out of it....and she was still falling.  Sometimes its a trip, sometimes there is no reason. She can be standing or sitting still and fall over.  She would go to get on a chair and completely miss it and fall in front of it.  She would head for a doorway and walk into the frame or even the wall beside it.  She walks into furniture.

We started seeing an ophthalmologist.  She has astigmatism and is developing nearsightedness but it wasn't bad enough to give her glasses so young.  They tested her depth perception and it seemed to be okay.  She goes every six months to keep an eye on her eyesight and the occasional droopy eyelid.

She saw an orthopedist to see if there was a structural problem that could cause her toe walking and balance issues.  She was fine.

And now we see the neurologist, mostly for the speech regression but the falling and walking into things (and the fact that she often doesn't put her hands out to catch herself, she just falls into her face) are actually what prompted the EEG and MRI that discovered the abnormal brain waves and brain cyst.

Today we added the dentist into the mix.  With the boys, I started them at the dentist around 18 months but I couldn't really find anyone that would take Iz.  With her heart, we either heard, nope, won't see her at all, or were given an age range of 3-5 before she could be seen.  But recently I noticed her front two teeth, the ones she hits most often when she has a fall and doesn't catch herself with her hands, are discoloring and looking sort of greyish.  So I needed to find a dentist who would see her and finally, last week, one took her on!  We had to wait for cardiac clearance but they got her in today....and she refused to open her mouth :p

She was incredibly anxious and a little scared but the dentist was very kind and patient.  She didn't get a good look at Izzy's teeth but between what little she did see and what I described, she thinks one (or many) of Iz's falls damaged the nerves and they are dying or dead already.  We have a referral to a pediatric dentist that can do various types of sedation so they can relax her or knock her out and get a really good look at her teeth to confirm what is actually happening and get a treatment going.  If it is dead nerves, she would most likely need a baby root canal because she's too young to take a wait and see approach.  The dentist said with an older kid, they watch to make sure an infection doesn't develop and let the dead tooth come out on its own because the adult teeth are coming soon.  But Iz is too far away from adult teeth and baby teeth falling out too early can mess with the adult teeth coming in properly.  As much as I wish there was another explanation, I'm not sure I can sell that one to myself--I'm watching those tiny teeth get darker and darker and even before we spoke to the dentist, I thought those teeth were dying :(  Poor kid can't catch a break!

Hopefully we can get into the pediatric dentist soon to confirm and figure out our next step.