Hi!

My name is Judi Kloper and I live in Oregon, along with my husband Peter
Owens and three of our five kids.  The older two were adopted as older kids
from India and now live out of the home; one lives in a group home.

Our three at home are by birth, from India and from China.

Our son, Dana, is now 17 1/2 yrs old, and came to us from India at 8 weeks
old weighing just four pounds on arrival.  He is gorgeous, smart, charming,
and has severe quad. spastic and athetoid CP.  He's a senior in high school
and thinking about college.  This is a huge task we're starting on--exploring
colleges and careers for a kid who is so very physically limited.

Anyway, Dana has the baclofen pump (for 14 months now) and though he's had
some improvement, it's not been near as wonderful as we had heard it'd been
for others.  In fact, he has wanted it out.  He used to get botox injections,
which helped for a while, but then it seemed that he needed to get injections
more and more frequently.  He'd gone without them for about a year and just
recently got some in his left leg cus of the pain he was having, but it only
worked for a brief time.

Last June Dana had hip surgery and hamstring release (that was in both legs,
and just the left hip was operated on.)  While finally he doesn't have the
hip pain he was having, he now has incredible pain in his left upper thigh.
Can't move him from any position to another, in fact, just moving his left
leg an inch or two causes incredible pain for him.  He continues to take
Klonzapin (Clonipin?) at night, along with one ibuprofen.  The doctors at
Shriners in Portland haven't come up with a reason for this or a "fix," and
we are tired of going up there and saying the same thing, yet our son is in
intense pain and he cannot, nor can we, go on like this.  This is supposed to
be his senior year, which means good times as well as some learning
times....but it's really been difficult for him to focus.

Therefore, we would like to seek a second opinion.  If any of you in the
Seattle area could recommend some physicians for us to see (orthopedic with
specialty in CP and a neuroligist with specialty in CP, Baclofen, Botox, etc)
I sure would appreciate it.

Thanks so much.
Judi