January 17, 2010
This poor kid (and his parents) just can’t catch a break. Here we go for another hospital stay. But before I get to that, I should probably fill you in with some back story in case you haven’t read the First Trip to the ER post. Even if you did read it, there is some additional information included here.
When James was in the hospital after Thanksgiving because of respiratory distress, another issue that James had was a very distended stomach. You can click on the link to read about stomach distension in depth if you wish, but in brief, James’ belly looked very bloated. At the time, the doctors thought that it was a result of James inhaling air into his stomach as he was gasping for breath because of the respiratory distress. They decided to stop his normal feeds and give him IV fluids until his respiratory issues improved. As his breathing got better, they slowly reintroduced his feeds. They took some x-rays just to be sure there wasn’t any sort of blockage, but everything looked fine from a gastrointestinal (GI) perspective.
That hospital stay was about ten days. After we got him home, we hoped things would go back to “normal”, but James was having some feeding issues. For some reason he would get cranky during his feeds and we didn’t know why.
We made it through Christmas without any issues other than the crankiness during feeds. We went to see the pediatrician the day after Christmas for routine vaccinations, and some blood work. On January 16, 2010 we took James to see a GI doctor that was recommended. We wanted to get a second opinion on some of the feeding issues that James was having. What a horrible experience that was! I won’t even try to sugar coat it.
It started off like any normal appointment when you see a doctor for the first time. We went over James’ medical history, the reason for our visit, and then the doctor a quick examination of James. This is where things started to go south.
When he was examining James’ belly, he pointed to the Mic-Key button and asked us what this was. Stacy and I just looked at each other with confused looks on our faces. I think we had the same thoughts going through our heads. “Did he really just ask that?” “Was he serious?” “Maybe he was joking.” “What kind of gastrointestinal doctor doesn’t know what a Mic-Key button is?” He then recommended that we get rid of the Mic-Key button and go back to a g-tube, which we took to mean the PEG tube like James had in the NICU before he got his Mic-Key button. Again, we looked at each other dumbfounded: “Did he really want us to go back to the PEG tube?” “Don’t the PEG tube and G-tube perform the same function?” “How could the Mic-Key button cause the feeding issues and why does he think the PEG tube was the answer?”
When we got in the car to go home, we confirmed that we both had the same questions going through our heads during the appointment. Neither one of us could figure out if the doctor was serious and didn’t know what a Mic-Key button was, or if he was trying to be funny. The fact that he questioned it without the slightest hint of a smirk lead us to believe that he really didn’t know what it was. Needless to say that was the last time we saw that doctor. He did prescribe a medicine that James was given when he was in the hospital that seemed to help with discomfort during feedings so we filled it and started giving it to James every 8 hours.
Two days after that appointment we noticed a yellow liquid was coming out of James’ g-tube so we went to see our pediatrician and he ended up having James admitted to the hospital. Not again! Fortunately, this hospital stay was only 3 days.
They did an upper GI with small bowel follow-through. For this test, they put some barium concoction into James’ stomach through his g-tube and watched how the barium moved through his gastrointestinal tract with a fluoroscope. Everything looked fine and things were flowing as they should.
Next they did an ultrasound of his abdomen and there was a concern about his gallbladder and wanted to another ultrasound in the morning. The follow-up ultrasound showed James had a stone in his gallbladder, but as long as it remained in the gallbladder it should not be causing him any pain. The stone would only be causing James pain if or when the stone gets lodged in the bile duct thereby blocking movement of bile from the gallbladder.
So after a couple of days in the hospital, and a few tests, we didn’t have any answers as to what was causing his discomfort with his feeds. James did have a few infantile spasms while in the hospital. We took a video of one episode and showed the GI doctor. Her opinion was that the spasms were a classic sign of reflux, put him on an anti-reflux medication, and proceeded to discharge James from the hospital. She didn’t feel like there was a need to keep him in the hospital, but did want us to follow up with her.
Side note: James did have what appeared to be seizures and infantile spasms while in the NICU and after we brought him home. This will be the subject of a future post. James also had a fundoplication procedure done while he was in the NICU which was supposed to stop reflux.
