Quinn ph probe and sleep study.

Hi, thanks for keeping Q in your thoughts and prayers. Well, it seems that Quinn’s gastroenteritis wasn’t as bad as she has had them in the past. It didn’t even come with a fever. The diarrhea has stopped, thank goodness. it only lasted for three days, which is the shortest amount of time ever! But we do know that she does not digest much of her food. At all! It comes out like it goes in. I’ve always noticed it and always described her poops as being weird, but the docs never took me seriously until now.

Quinn has never had an endoscopy done. It’s scheduled for Wednesday now because they want to finish all the other testing first. I know they have to sedate her for it and put an IV in. I’m not looking forward to it. But at the same time I am because I want to know what it looks like down there. Also, her peptamin Junior is 240 calories per 8 ounce can! And she likes it, I think she’s gaining weight on it.

Well, Not much more to say, but thanks for keeping Q in your thoughts and prayers.

-Sarah

I can breathe a sigh of relief. After seven and a half very very long days in the hospital, Quinn and I are finally home! We were only supposed to be there over night, but Quinn had lost some weight since we went to the GI doctor three weeks before, and so GI was concerned. I’m not overly satisfied with the results, but at least we are getting somewhere.

Quinn didn’t meet the required caloric intake for her age for three days in a row. She was always about 500 calories or more under what she should be taking in to keep her growing right. So, yesterday when we went in to do the endoscopy, they told me that there were orders for a j-peg as well. I just about fell over and demanded to speek with the doctor. I asked him to please hold off on the j-peg and let’s just see if the peptamen jr. works for a little while longer. He agreed, thankfully. So, instead they did just the endoscopy. Quinn was prepped, there were many doctors in there and her IV was injected with the sleepy meds and within seconds, Quinn was in la la land and then passed out. Oxygen was placed and I left her in there for twenty minutes. Then she was wheeled out to recovery. She slept for a little over an hour. That was some good sedation because she was so loopy when she woke up. It was like I was holding a three month old. She couldn’t even hold her head up. And when we went back to our room, she was flopping around like a fish coming out of the sedation. It was kinda cute and funny. She was laughing like crazy!

Anyways, the endoscopy was better than anyone had expected. She has esophagitis, a laxed LES. And some damage to her esophagus, a little bit of damage to her intestinal lining right by her stomach, but otherwise, it looked good. He said that her reflux is very severe, but based on the scope and biopsies, he didn’t recommend surgery at that time. He said that he agrees that her reflux needs to be under control, and he wants to try a combination of pepcid and prevacid with the reglan and see if that makes a difference. He said that if all else fails, surgery may be her only source of relief, but at this time, he wasn’t going to recommend it. Thank you God!!! It’s bought us some time. We are to follow up with GI in two weeks.

The stomach bug that Q has right now is salmenella. That struck me as odd, but that’s what the cultures said. I asked why our family didn’t have it then and why she gets it all the time… he said that Quinn has a hyper sensitive stomach. He instructed me that it is very important that we thoroughly wash all our fresh foods, wash our hands all the time, wash carts tables highchairs when we go out, mop our floors every day etc. etc. etc. Basically told me to be a complete germ freak! Any bug that will upset the stomach, Quinn is very suseptible to. More suseptible to most kids. Ugh… this will be difficult.

Also, they want her to drink 5 cans of peptamin jr. per day! I really thought that was too high. Two or maybe three is all we’ve been able to get into her. if I feed her more than three cans, she won’t eat her normal food. So I think we are not going to see her drink five cans, but I can already tell that she’s gained weight on the 2-3 cans of peptamin junior. Oh, I was wrong on the calories for that, it’s 250, not 240. Anyways… I just was expecting a cure all for her or an answer but at least we have a treatment plan. She is doing well. Quinn went back down on her weight to 20 pounds exactly, but hey, she’s gained over a pound at that hospital. I’m thinking it might be because she was on IV fluids as well, though too… but we have to follow up with the pedi in one week. Hopefully she will still be 20 pounds. I feel so bad for her. having to go through all this. She threw up her dinner tonight when we left the hospital. But she looks so much better than when we came in. When we were admitted, the parents would think she was maybe a year old or younger and would ask if she was a preemie and talk about how petite she looked, but when we left, nobody commented on her size and one person actually asked if she was 18 months old! I felt really good leaving with a “chunky” baby.

Quinn puked up her food tonight and she’s been sleeping all day. We were discharged with a butt load of instructions and 5 medications. Whew… what a week. The sad thing is that when I walked out of the hospital, I didn’t think that we would never be there again, I hoped it, but It’s just a matter of time.

Thanks for keeping Quinn in your thoughts and prayers. It’s worked so far, so thank you!

-Sarah