EEEEEK! It's AUGUST and I didn't finish telling you about our trip to CHOP in June. Life really got away from us.
When you left us, Aidan had been painfully vomiting green bile. After a weekend of this, we were sent to the ER for some tests, and ultimately allowed to go home. A week passed without improvement and we followed up with GI, who sent us directly back to the ER, where Aidan was admitted on a Friday night.
Saturday on 5 South was exceptionally uneventful - no feeds for Aidan and no vomiting. Scattered episodes of stomach pain, but nothing severe. Around lunchtime, we started Pedialyte at 35ml/h (half of his normal rate) and it was tolerated well. Around dinnertime, we increased to 70ml/h and after some initial discomfort, he settled down and tolerated that well too. I don't know - maybe he just needed some gut rest?
On Sunday, the doctors rounded around 10am and came up with a plan. We'd be starting feeds slowly and increasing every four hours as tolerated. If he had an episode, we'd call radiology for emergency imaging. If not, we'd do imaging on Monday morning. I figured we'd have a quiet day. But it wasn't without bumps in the road.
For instance - did you know that if your child is on PurAmino, you should come prepared for no one - ever - to have heard of it? For the formula room to insist they don't have it? Nor do they know how to mix it. Tom had to make an emergency trip downtown with a supply of formula to save the day. When it arrived, it took hours - literally, hours - for the formula room to figure out what to do with it. The kicker? They eventually realized that they did have it (still didn't know how to mix it, so thankfully I recently blogged about how we mixed it - otherwise there's no way I'd have remembered). Long story short - the 10am decision to start feeds actually took effect at 3:30 due to all of that hoopla. And advancing feeds every 4 hours? HA! We got up to 45ml/h before having to go NPO.
Sunday also brought some stoma pain - It's looking a little bit infected, which is a shame since it's normally such a beautiful stoma. They ordered up some mupirocin (easy enough) and some tylenol, which caused a(nother) pharmacy debacle. See, we don't use their tylenol, we use ours. They don't have dye-free tylenol because dye allergies aren't real, evidently. So we have to bring our own and send it to their pharmacy, where they verify it (whatever that entails) and eventually it arrives back in our room to be administered. Unfortunately, the "eventually" is sometimes a while. Like an hour or two. Which is really unfortunate for a kid who's in pain. I later learned that the order was written incorrectly, which confused the pharmacy. Then the pharmacy wrote a confusing note back to the doctor, who was (you guessed it) confused. Then our nurse inexplicably left the floor without her phone, and the nurse filling in knew nothing about it. Sigh. We did work it out eventually.
So as of Sunday evening, the plan to advance feeds was pretty well compromised, because he would have to be NPO (nothing by mouth. Is that common knowledge? I don't know if pre-all-of-this-me knew those particular letters, but we know them well now) at midnight in preparation for tomorrow's Upper GI. We'd started at 35ml/h at 3:30pm, and around 8:30 we moved up to 45ml/h, but no further advancement because of the looming Upper GI.
An Upper GI is a special kind of X-Ray that helps doctors see the gastrointestinal tract. Preparation includes drinking barium contrast (so some people call this a "barium swallow study") and then taking lots of pictures - usually about 2 hours' worth, and sometimes even more!
On Monday, we woke up just in time for the Upper GI. Aidan took one itsy bitsy sip of Barium and then couldn't be convinced to take more. Luckily, we aren't too concerned about the "upper" part, and really just needed to see the barium move through the stomach and small and large intestines.
The first thing we did with the Upper GI was take a "before" picture - his tummy without any Barium.
Then, Aidan took his tiny sip of Barium, and they took X-Rays. And then Barium was injected into his G-Tube, and more X-Rays. Then we got to cheat a bit, since he has a J-Tube too. We got to inject Barium into the J-port, and the tech said that he thought we'd get out of there early! After that, we had to wait in a little room for 20 minutes while the Barium moved through his intestines, and then back to the X-Ray machine for more pictures. I'll speed this story up and tell you that we did not get out of there early, even with the cheating. The tech was thinking we might only need one or two cycles of waiting/pictures - so we'd be done in less than 90 minutes total. Actually, it took over four hours.
Aidan's motility is not the best, even on erythromycin (his motility med), so the Barium really just wasn't moving through like we hoped it would. It took forever. But eventually, we did get a belly full of Barium.
When we finally got back up to our room, Aidan took a nap and I got some work done while waiting for the doctor to come talk about the results and our plan for him. Turns out it would be a preposterously long wait, since GI never actually came back and eventually left for the day. Thanks, jerks.
When GI came back the next day, we did learn that Aidan's Upper GI was not normal. We already know that he has delayed gastric emptying - when food (or formula, whatever) is introduced into his stomach, it doesn't move through at the normal rate. This is why it took so long for the Barium to move through. The test also showed some not-too-specific inflammation of the colon - which could be from normal illness, or could be from an EGE flare. Not really any more information than we previously had.
Ultimately, we decided to bring Aidan home, with orders to return immediately if the bilious vomiting began again.
It was more or less the same as ever. Aidan in crisis, needs gut rest and IV fluids for several days, and a slow reintroduction of feeds. I wish I knew why this keeps happening to him :-(
Side Note...
The whole time we were inpatient, Aidan was on contact precautions due to a suspected c-diff infection. The hospital was unable to confirm or rule out the infection because - true to form - Aidan's digestive system shut down and no test sample could be obtained. This particular monster would come back to bite us later on.
Final Thoughts...
I understand that CHOP is ranked #1 by US News & World Report, but clearly, they've never actually stayed here. Or they don't have children. Or they don't need fancy luxuries like a pillow to sleep on. I do wonder how different our experience would be with a planned admission for a surgery. Emergency Room visits that end in admissions are just always so nebulous and vague. Who knows what we're doing or when we're going home? My experience here would be at least 80% better if doctors could be bothered to clearly communicate.
When you left us, Aidan had been painfully vomiting green bile. After a weekend of this, we were sent to the ER for some tests, and ultimately allowed to go home. A week passed without improvement and we followed up with GI, who sent us directly back to the ER, where Aidan was admitted on a Friday night.
Saturday on 5 South was exceptionally uneventful - no feeds for Aidan and no vomiting. Scattered episodes of stomach pain, but nothing severe. Around lunchtime, we started Pedialyte at 35ml/h (half of his normal rate) and it was tolerated well. Around dinnertime, we increased to 70ml/h and after some initial discomfort, he settled down and tolerated that well too. I don't know - maybe he just needed some gut rest?
 |
| A gut at rest :) |
On Sunday, the doctors rounded around 10am and came up with a plan. We'd be starting feeds slowly and increasing every four hours as tolerated. If he had an episode, we'd call radiology for emergency imaging. If not, we'd do imaging on Monday morning. I figured we'd have a quiet day. But it wasn't without bumps in the road.
For instance - did you know that if your child is on PurAmino, you should come prepared for no one - ever - to have heard of it? For the formula room to insist they don't have it? Nor do they know how to mix it. Tom had to make an emergency trip downtown with a supply of formula to save the day. When it arrived, it took hours - literally, hours - for the formula room to figure out what to do with it. The kicker? They eventually realized that they did have it (still didn't know how to mix it, so thankfully I recently blogged about how we mixed it - otherwise there's no way I'd have remembered). Long story short - the 10am decision to start feeds actually took effect at 3:30 due to all of that hoopla. And advancing feeds every 4 hours? HA! We got up to 45ml/h before having to go NPO.
Sunday also brought some stoma pain - It's looking a little bit infected, which is a shame since it's normally such a beautiful stoma. They ordered up some mupirocin (easy enough) and some tylenol, which caused a(nother) pharmacy debacle. See, we don't use their tylenol, we use ours. They don't have dye-free tylenol because dye allergies aren't real, evidently. So we have to bring our own and send it to their pharmacy, where they verify it (whatever that entails) and eventually it arrives back in our room to be administered. Unfortunately, the "eventually" is sometimes a while. Like an hour or two. Which is really unfortunate for a kid who's in pain. I later learned that the order was written incorrectly, which confused the pharmacy. Then the pharmacy wrote a confusing note back to the doctor, who was (you guessed it) confused. Then our nurse inexplicably left the floor without her phone, and the nurse filling in knew nothing about it. Sigh. We did work it out eventually.
So as of Sunday evening, the plan to advance feeds was pretty well compromised, because he would have to be NPO (nothing by mouth. Is that common knowledge? I don't know if pre-all-of-this-me knew those particular letters, but we know them well now) at midnight in preparation for tomorrow's Upper GI. We'd started at 35ml/h at 3:30pm, and around 8:30 we moved up to 45ml/h, but no further advancement because of the looming Upper GI.
An Upper GI is a special kind of X-Ray that helps doctors see the gastrointestinal tract. Preparation includes drinking barium contrast (so some people call this a "barium swallow study") and then taking lots of pictures - usually about 2 hours' worth, and sometimes even more!
On Monday, we woke up just in time for the Upper GI. Aidan took one itsy bitsy sip of Barium and then couldn't be convinced to take more. Luckily, we aren't too concerned about the "upper" part, and really just needed to see the barium move through the stomach and small and large intestines.
The first thing we did with the Upper GI was take a "before" picture - his tummy without any Barium.
 |
| I spy a tummy! |
 |
| Ho hum. Waiting is the worst! |
 |
| We'll file this away under "things only a mother would love" |
 |
| Dainty |
When GI came back the next day, we did learn that Aidan's Upper GI was not normal. We already know that he has delayed gastric emptying - when food (or formula, whatever) is introduced into his stomach, it doesn't move through at the normal rate. This is why it took so long for the Barium to move through. The test also showed some not-too-specific inflammation of the colon - which could be from normal illness, or could be from an EGE flare. Not really any more information than we previously had.
Ultimately, we decided to bring Aidan home, with orders to return immediately if the bilious vomiting began again.
It was more or less the same as ever. Aidan in crisis, needs gut rest and IV fluids for several days, and a slow reintroduction of feeds. I wish I knew why this keeps happening to him :-(
Side Note...
The whole time we were inpatient, Aidan was on contact precautions due to a suspected c-diff infection. The hospital was unable to confirm or rule out the infection because - true to form - Aidan's digestive system shut down and no test sample could be obtained. This particular monster would come back to bite us later on.
Final Thoughts...
I understand that CHOP is ranked #1 by US News & World Report, but clearly, they've never actually stayed here. Or they don't have children. Or they don't need fancy luxuries like a pillow to sleep on. I do wonder how different our experience would be with a planned admission for a surgery. Emergency Room visits that end in admissions are just always so nebulous and vague. Who knows what we're doing or when we're going home? My experience here would be at least 80% better if doctors could be bothered to clearly communicate.
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