So Which One are We Choosing??

By "which one?" I mean which diagnosis! Callista has been in the hospital since Monday for vomiting. We took her to the ER on Friday and they did a shunt series and MRI, then sent us home. By Monday, she couldn't keep anything down and it was dehydrating her. In the ER, they insisted again on the shunt being the culprit. It was not. She was admitted and more testing was done throughout the week. For four days straight, if she was awake she was screaming in pain and having breath holding spells one right after another. I think we got maybe 9 hours of sleep total in those four days. She has been through several tests and procedures. Now we are playing the game where we try to see how many diagnosis we can go through.

1. Shunt-- Nope says Neuro
2. Kidney infection-- No way says Renal Scan and X-Rays
3. Shunt (again, seriously?)-- Once again, a big N-O from Neuro
4. UTI-- Yes actually, but it's still the same one from last time which apparently did not get cleared up.
5. G-tube ulcer- Scope says no, but there is a lot of irritation in her esophagus and stomach lining.

We are still admitted, I can't wait to see how many more we can add to our list and how many more times "shunt" comes up. To top it off, we were put on the junk floor over in the old part of the hospital. It's not the fact that it's an old room, but more that most of the people over there are clueless. Many of them refuse to listen to us as parents, there is only one space to sleep (one space, two parents, what to do?), and many of the people fluctuate from being TOO attentive and waking her up every five seconds, or not attentive at all, with alarms and beeping driving us nuts for long periods of time. Lucky us, after it was decidedly a GI issue, we got moved to the GI unit. One of our favorite nurses is taking care of her now, and I actually got some sleep. Nothing more exciting than that! It certainly isn't the way I wanted to spend my week or weekend but hopefully we've convinced GI that there's something more going on besides simple reflux.

Mother's Day Muck

Happy Mother's Day to me... Friday we took Callie in to NCH because she was throwing up everything. They checked her shunt through x-ray and MRI and the results showed stable. By the time we got out, she was doing better. Yesterday she did fine with slower feeds. Today is a different story. Our morning has involved puke, puke, and more puke. She had some coffee ground emesis this morning, so I switched out her formula for pedialyte. Since then we've done much better as long as she doesn't move. Usually when we get the brown yuck it's after she has worn out her esophagus. I'm trying very hard to treat this from home, no one wants another stay in the hospital! Poor kid... Needless to say, our mother's day plans changed! Lucky for us, my daddy has volunteered to be the grill master today and cook out instead of eat out. Let's hope Callista gets over whatever this bug is soon!

Of course, what better day than today to give a shout out to our mommies. Both of our moms have been incredibly supportive of us throughout our lives and especially the last year and a half. We are so lucky to have two great women as influences and cheerleaders.

Some moms have the typical path to follow while others are forced to take a rougher road. But all moms have struggles and hardships and tough decisions to make. We all fight with ourselves about whether or not we chose correctly, did the right thing, are we a good mom? Enjoy the day and each second you have with your children, special needs or not, because that is what being a mom is all about.

Shunt Scare

We had a pretty big shunt scare yesterday, but luckily everything turned out okay. When we gave Callie her bath Wednesday I noticed her lower back looked a little puffy. It did not seem to be bothering her so we waited until the neurology office was open in the morning. They were concerned that her shunt was not working and fluid was building up on her spine. We rushed to Children's ER at their advice. They also thought it could be a shunt malfunction. Apparently there was no hurry though because we waited almost five hours for an MRI. I tried to maintain my patience, but it is extremely frustrating to wait that long when the possibility of a shunt malfunction is very real when we've been whisked into MRIs for ER visits having NOTHING to do with her shunt. Her ventricles looked stable. They did a shunt series X-ray and it showed no clogs or kinks. So the shunt is in working order (yay!). The neurosurgeon on duty came to look at her and informed us that it is not a pocket of fluid but is more likely a part of irritated tissue from a recent virus. Well okay! We're still getting over RSV (can last 2 to four weeks in some cases) AND she just received her one year shots on Tuesday. Either or both of those things could be the cause. We were released with instructions to keep an eye on the are and to schedule a full MRI with sedation soon.

I am quite thankful, as my mommy guts told me something was wrong and I dreaded the thought of her having surgery. Besides, her hair is finally growing over her shunt and you can barely see it, give the poor girl a fashion break! Now we are just looking forward to the weekend a lot of baby cuddle time.