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September 27, 2011
We had our Upper GI Imaging this morning, let's just say Matthew was NOT a fan.
Poor little guy, he couldn't eat before so his last feeding was at 5am. They finally took us back around 10:20am and empty tummy translates to easily upset in Matthew's world. He was actually handling it ok, the change in scenery from the car to the waiting room to the x-ray room kept him entertained. It wasn't until they strapped him down to a table, and had me pin his arms down above his head that he lost it. They kept giving him little sips of Barium in a bottle (it's supposed to taste chalky), and he didn't like the taste. I guess talking it up as Bar-i-yum! didn't work :( He also couldn't see me because I was above his head holding his arms, so that didn't help calm my Mamma's boy down either. We had to keep working to calm him down enough to get a quick image before he started crying again...over and over. Once he was done and in my arms with his paci he was perfectly happy again and even gave the technicians a big smile :)
The procedure would have been pretty quick if he'd been calm. They strapped Matthew to a table that could rotate. I held his arms above his head as they gave him sips of Barium and snapped images of it flowing down his esophagus, into his stomach, and down into his small intestines. The table he was strapped to could rotate, and we rotated it three different ways to get the image from different angles - one on his back, one with him rotated with his left shoulder toward the ceiling, and then once flipped the other way too. After it was all done we had to wait ten minutes before he could have a bottle. Like I said, it would have been pretty painless if Matthew hadn't been hungry (fussy) and could have seen me.
So, now we wait. I'm thinking it will be a couple of days before we hear anything. Dr. Varshney is very thorough so she's going to go over the results of all of his tests (upper GI images, bloodwork, and stool samples) and consult with her colleagues before getting back to us. We're praying that we're just dealing with FPIES, with no other digestive system issues. FPIES alone is enough - but we also know God won't give us more than we can handle. We're going to make sure Matthew is as healthy as possible, that's why we're running all these tests, to make sure we aren't overlooking other issues that he may have in addition to his FPIES.
Poor little guy, he couldn't eat before so his last feeding was at 5am. They finally took us back around 10:20am and empty tummy translates to easily upset in Matthew's world. He was actually handling it ok, the change in scenery from the car to the waiting room to the x-ray room kept him entertained. It wasn't until they strapped him down to a table, and had me pin his arms down above his head that he lost it. They kept giving him little sips of Barium in a bottle (it's supposed to taste chalky), and he didn't like the taste. I guess talking it up as Bar-i-yum! didn't work :( He also couldn't see me because I was above his head holding his arms, so that didn't help calm my Mamma's boy down either. We had to keep working to calm him down enough to get a quick image before he started crying again...over and over. Once he was done and in my arms with his paci he was perfectly happy again and even gave the technicians a big smile :)
The procedure would have been pretty quick if he'd been calm. They strapped Matthew to a table that could rotate. I held his arms above his head as they gave him sips of Barium and snapped images of it flowing down his esophagus, into his stomach, and down into his small intestines. The table he was strapped to could rotate, and we rotated it three different ways to get the image from different angles - one on his back, one with him rotated with his left shoulder toward the ceiling, and then once flipped the other way too. After it was all done we had to wait ten minutes before he could have a bottle. Like I said, it would have been pretty painless if Matthew hadn't been hungry (fussy) and could have seen me.
So, now we wait. I'm thinking it will be a couple of days before we hear anything. Dr. Varshney is very thorough so she's going to go over the results of all of his tests (upper GI images, bloodwork, and stool samples) and consult with her colleagues before getting back to us. We're praying that we're just dealing with FPIES, with no other digestive system issues. FPIES alone is enough - but we also know God won't give us more than we can handle. We're going to make sure Matthew is as healthy as possible, that's why we're running all these tests, to make sure we aren't overlooking other issues that he may have in addition to his FPIES.
