All Pink and Beautiful

Cole's always been good at spitting up, real good. He can dribble out a few drops, dump 1/3 of his bottle in your lap or just as easily shoot his breakfast across the bow. The doctors believed he had reflux and have been treating us accordingly (medicine mostly). We scheduled a pH Study to determine how severe his reflux was. We were scheduled to check in for a overnight stay late in the afternoon on Thu. 

That morning Shawn woke up to change and feed him at 4:00 am and Cole spit up a bit, not too unusual. But he noticed some dried blood in the spit up - unusual. He spit up several more times each time the amount of blood increasing. They had, in preparation for his visit and tests had us discontinue all meds - so we thought this might be contributing to the blood - but it was enough to take him to KidsCare. They were concerned and wanted us to get additional work done right away. So as usual, they sent us down to Primary Children's hospital - our home away from home. We spent 8 hours in the ER waiting to be tested - our original check in time came and went. They took us back to our room in the ER and then we waited some more - until a room was ready for us upstairs. The next morning, Cole went in for a scope. 

The results were beautiful - shiny and pink. All of the concerns that his reflux was damaging his throat and stomach were put to rest. They decided to still have the pH Study and we went back upstairs to begin. The idea is they stick another tube down his remaining nostril (I guess it's a good think he only has two, who knows what they'd put down the it). 

     

This one, unlike his feeding tube only goes to his esophagus rather than all the way to his stomach. They know the level of acidity there is around 4. So the probe, which is hooked up to a recording device tracks the level over a 24 hour period - while he's awake, while he's sitting up, lying down, eating, crying, etc. The nurses also record on a paper log the levels every 30 min as a supplemental report. The whole experience made for a long weekend for everyone. But the good news is - very few episodes where the level was above 5.5 (high (e.g., 7) is bad, moderate (e.g., 4) is normal, and low (e.g., 2) is good). 

The other reason to check his insides was driving whether we would perform what's called a Nissan procedure where they wrap the bottom of his esophagus around the top of his stomach which would prevent him from throwing up. But with the levels generally low to moderate except for a few instances, they've decided to wait and see - which we're happy for.