Medical Updates

What a mess.  Literally! Paige started throwing up last Thursday night.  Everywhere. And continued until yesterday.  She would throw up at night, be cranky and sometimes sick again in the morning and would then improve in the afternoon, tolerate food and play.  We would think she was better and then she'd repeat this performance starting around midnight again.  It was very odd.  And it came at the worst time possible - Mommy's first trip away when Daddy was alone!  Poor Daddy.  But he did an awesome job managing these two alone for 2 1/2 days.

Since yesterday was day 5, I decided to take her to the pediatrician.  They were slightly alarmed at the duration of her vomiting and the fact that it was only occuring when she was laying down.  The pediatrician recommended a head CT scan and we decided that she had 48 hours to improve or that was the next step.  We were really hoping this wouldn't be necessary, especially since it requires sedation at her age.  Luckily, we finally had a vomit free night last night. And we've hopefully escaped that test.  She is definitely feeling a little better but is still not our normal, easy Paige.

Andrew finally got to see the gastroenterologist today.  Jack took the day off to bring him in and Nana (thank goodness for her!) came up to help and stay with Paige.  We talked to Dr. Darbari for a while and reviewed Andrew's test results.  His sweat test was negative, preliminary tests for Celiac Disease were negative and fecal fat repeat was more normal.  All good.  But leaving us again without answers.  We weighed him at their office and compared to the last time we was there in January.  He dropped again on their scale and confirmed his weight loss/lack of gain issue.  Dr. Darbari feels that its time to do an endoscopy/colonscopy to take some pictures and get some biopsies.  Their wait time for this to be done is likely 4-6 weeks.  So we wait.  Again. For the scheduler to call us and give us a procedure date.  It will require general anesthesia but will hopefully be a same day procedure. 

It seems like our lives are consumed by doctor appointments and medical issues lately.  Every Friday for the next six weeks, we have medical appointments - developmental assessments and county evaluations, ENT visits, pediatrician visits, Paige's ear tube surgery with pre and postop visits, Andrew's endoscopy/biopsies, gastroenterology followup, and weight checks.

We really thought we'd be done with all the medical issues by now.  It is a bit frustrating that our lives are still so wrapped around their health.  We are just hoping that all this attention now will find any problems so that we can address them early.  So until Andrew's procedure, we will focus on bulking him up by sneaking in lots of extra calories - butter, sugar, eggs and extra cheese added to everything.  High calorie milk shakes.  Fatty foods.  Dr. Darbari told us today "there is no such thing as bad fat with weight loss.  Give him Krispy Kreme!" Wouldn't we all love to have his problem?!?  Here's to our "Tank" gaining his fat belly back:)