Rough Week

Forgive me if this is not all that coherent – I am not operating on all cylinders at the moment. But here’s the story…

In January 2012 I wrote a post about how Kate had been randomly vomiting since the December before. Months of tests and MRIs and all kinds of stuff led us to find out that she had Rotovirus, and it was taking her system a long time to rid itself of the bug. But, it was a diagnosis, and we thought we would eventually see the end of it.

Two years later, we haven’t really seen the end.

It’s weird. It doesn’t happen with any regularity, but I’d estimate that about once every 4-6 weeks Kate has a bout of vomiting and/or other digestive issues. Typically, she’s sick once and then fine (which makes me REALLY PLEASED to have to take a day off work). A few weeks ago, though, she had an episode that lasted about four days, and we found ourselves back in the GI department at Cincinnati Children’s.

Initial blood and, um, other tests showed that something was off. She has inflammation of some sort in her intestines, but those tests weren’t enough for a diagnosis, so Wednesday (my 35th birthday, coincidentally) we headed back to Children’s for an upper and lower endoscopy.

I’m not sure which was more fun – Wednesday, the day of the actual procedure, or Tuesday, the day of preparation for the procedure.

Those of you who have been through such things know what I’m talking about.

It was really not fun for any of us, but overall Kate was a champ. She handled 36 hours of a liquid diet much better than I had anticipated. (I agreed to do it with her in solidarity, but you’d better believe I hit the vending machine for some M&Ms as soon as we got into the waiting room.)

The worst part – for Andy and me anyway – was watching her be sedated. I had a long list of things to worry about going into that day, and the moment of sedation wasn’t one of them. I was caught off guard by how disturbing that sight was.

Fortunately, everything they were able to see through the scope looked good. They didn’t see evidence of Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis or any of the other chronic conditions her blood tests indicated were possibilities – huge relief. But, we don’t know what it is yet. They took some samples to biopsy, and they’re running another test for a bacterial infection; hopefully one of those things will turn into a diagnosis of some sort so we can figure out what the heck this is and get it fixed.

I know this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but I still hate to see my baby sick.