Recently, a teenager was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. Meningitis is an inflammation or swelling of the linings that cover the brain and spinal cord. Meningitis can occur at any age. The shaded areas in the picture show where the swelling occurs.

Meningitis can be spread through close contact.

This potentially fatal disease can be prevented with a simple shot. Talk to your child’s doctor or nurse to find out how to protect your child from bacterial meningitis as well as other preventable diseases.  Immunizations are an important part of maintaining health and wellness.

An infant with meningitis may have:

• Fever (body temperature higher than normal)
• Vomiting
• Body temperature lower than normal
• Decreased appetite
• High-pitched sound to the cry
• Stiff neck
• Bulging or tense soft spot on the top of the head
• Irritability

A child or teenager with meningitis may have:

• Fever (body temperature higher than normal)
• Vomiting
• Decreased appetite
• Unusual Sleepiness
• Stiff neck
• Headache
• Eyes are overly sensitive to light

For more information, visit www.chw.org/immunize.

Bright Futures, a helpful guideline for our physicals, describes the ages of 11 to 14 as early adolescence.  These years are typically filled with a great amount of change in a child’s life and can be both exciting and terrifying.

Most of us remember our own awkward years, either good or bad. Visits to the doctor can be a lot of fun for some children but embarrassing to others. This makes the pre-teen and teen visits even more important. Because of this awkwardness or embarrassment, we often ask parents to step out of the room for the first time during one of these visits.  Parents sometimes wonder why.

Each visit with your child is an opportunity for us to build our relationship with him or her.  This relationship with their health care professional will promote confidence and full disclosure of health information. It also can enhance self-management.

At Forest View Pediatrics, I like to explain this to parents in three sections:

1.)    It’s time for your child to ask an adult in a confidential setting any questions they may be too scared or embarrassed to ask anyone else. Often these questions arise more from jokes or stories they’ve heard friends tell and less often from personal experience. They can ask me anything and get my opinion. However, I do encourage my patients to discuss these same topics with their parents, too. A parent’s opinion will always be the most important one despite what your child’s friends may think.

2.)    Puberty is very personal and many children have questions they may not feel comfortable asking. Many questions can come up during the exam. “Is that normal?” is a pretty common one and the answer is almost always “yes.” Reassuring your child that he or she is normal is a large part of the visit.

3.)    Building a great patient-doctor relationship. We love when teens are able to express their concerns directly to their doctor. It shows that he or she is comfortable without mom or dad giving the answers. We want to encourage your son or daughter to speak for themselves about their health and lifestyle. To me, this is the most important reason for the visit.

So, if we ask you to step out of the room for a visit, it’s only because we want to get to know your child better. We want to help them grow into mature, expressive adults we know you’ll be proud of.

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to care for your kids.

-Paul Veldhouse, MD, Forest View Pediatrics

You may have read and heard a lot about concussions lately. I recently cowrote a clinical report on sports-related concussions in children and adolescents that will be published today in Pediatrics. There have been some positive changes in the NFL and NCAA to improve safety, but you will be glad to know the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletics Association has been following these improved rules for a few years now.

Concussions are brain injuries and need to be taken seriously. They don’t just happen in professional sports, they happen in every sport, at any age, to boys and girls.

Concussions are treated much differently now than they were 10 years ago. While we have learned a lot about concussion, medical professionals continue to learn how to better recognize, treat and prevent short- and long-term consequences.

A concussion is a brain injury that temporarily alters brain functions. It usually happens after a direct blow to the head, but it also can happen from a blow elsewhere on the body where the force gets transmitted up to the head. Most young people are not knocked out, and many kids have no memory loss. Even a child with a normal MRI or CT scan of the brain can have a concussion, because it’s a functional injury, not damage to the brain’s structure. (more…)