Thursday, November 20, 2008

Dodged a bullet

Perhaps you've heard about how babies in China have been getting sick because of melamine in their formula? If not, here's a brief recap: Shortly after the Olympics ended last summer, it came out that several babies had died and thousands were seriously ill because their formula had been tainted by melamine. Melamine is an industrial chemical that, when added to a food, can make its protein content appear to be higher than it really is, thus boosting the value of the product. It happened a year or so ago with pet foods from China too.

Well, evidently this had been going on for quite awhile in China, and was kept out of the media until after the Olympics in order to avoid tarnishing the image China wanted to project to the world while all eyes were watching. It is quite clear that it has been going on since late 2007, and there is evidence that it was happening possibly as far back as 2004. It can cause kidney stones and even kidney failure.

As you can imagine, we were rather concerned, seeing as how we just adopted Z this February. We were not sure which brand of formula her orphanage used, or even if they consistently used a particular brand, and in any case, the list of brands contaminated by melamine seems to be growing rapidly.

I talked to Z's pediatrician about it at her two-year check-up a few weeks ago. Luckily, she happens to be married to the guy who heads up our children's hospital's international adoption clinic, so she was able to get the latest information and suggested course of action. On her advice, we had three tests run on poor miss Z:
1) blood pressure test
2) blood test for kidney function (this was NOT fun for anyone involved, Z especially)
3) urinalysis for signs of kidney stones

We got a call from the pediatrician yesterday -- all three tests came back perfectly normal. Whew.

3 comments:

Cavatica said...

Good news! We have done the blood work and finally got the urine specimen this morning (not easy when she only occasionally uses theh potty). We should have those results soon. The blood was normal.

Snowflowers Mum said...

we still have to do the ultrasound, but the blood work came back excellent.

ditto on the bullet dodging.

insanemommy said...

Thank g-d! You must have felt a sense of relief.

Katie saw the peditrician for her asthima like symtoms a couple weeks ago. I inquired at the time if the girls should be tested for Melamine and he didn't think we needed to worry...now I'm worried, even though he said if she or her sister had been contaminated with Melamine they would have had symptoms by now.... Maybe I should push him to test.....