Although we had a great time at the fair, what we brought back was not so great. A few days after the fair Jaxson started throwing up. For three weeks, Jaxson threw up almost every day and we had no idea what was going on. It is a long story, but here is the note that I posted on Facebook to explain what was going on.
"Several people have asked about what is going on. Most know a portion, but this is starting to become such a long story that I thought I would write it out so that you didn’t have to listen to me tell it or if you were curious but not happen to be a close friend or relative. I just went back and read this. Wow it is long! I doubt many of you will read it, but it is there if you want to.
Three weeks ago (October 7th), we got the kids up like normal for school and got them ready. We were walking out the door and Brock went into Jax’s room to get his backpack and noticed that he had thrown up in his bed and didn’t tell us. (A side note, it is not uncommon for Jaxson to wake up in the middle of the night and come and sleep on our floor without us knowing he is there. So, when we woke up and found him sleeping on the floor, it wasn’t a big surprise.) So we asked Jax if he was feeling alright and he said he was fine. I started thinking back to the night before and I remembered that I told him he could have 2 cookies. I was busy getting Halle ready for bed and Brock wasn’t home and well, let’s just say…he ate more than 2 cookies. So, I chalked it up to the fact that he ate too much and left for school. They called down to my class about 9:00 and told me that Jax had thrown up. So, I found a sub, got my stuff ready and left with Jax. We came home and he was fine all day. He ate and held his food down, he never complained once.
So, Friday morning as we are walking into school he says he’s about to throw up but never does. He then tells me he is fine and wants to go to class. He goes to class and is fine all day.
Saturday morning at about 5:30, he wakes up says mom, I need to throw up…I tell him to go to the bathroom. He throws up, goes back to bed and wakes up like nothing ever happened. We go to my niece’s first birthday party, he jumps in the bounce house, eats 2 cupcakes, and is completely fine.
Sunday morning he doesn’t throw up at all and is completely fine all day.
Monday morning at 5:30 again, he throws up. I was already staying home because Amanda wanted the day to spend with her family, so he just stayed home with Kaden and Halle. He threw up that once and was fine all day.
Tuesday morning at about 5:30, he throws up again. Only this time Kaden started throwing up in the middle of the night and had diarrhea so we just assumed that they both had a virus. Well, Brock did, but I was still not convinced that he had a virus. So, Jaxson stayed home. Again, he was completely fine all day.
Wednesday morning, he doesn’t throw up but I already had a follow up appointment at the RISD Health Center for some tests I had. So, I just took him with me. Of course, by now everyone and their mother’s sister had weighed in on what was going on with Jax. About a million people told me it was probably just a virus. I KNEW it was not a virus. I am a mother of 4 so when I know what a virus is. Kaden had a virus and threw up non-stop and had diarrhea for about 4 hours and then was fine. That is a virus. When you have a virus you are in pain, you throw up over and over, you feel horrible. It was not a virus. So the doctor at the health clinic listens to all his symptoms and decides that it is probably Acid Reflux, which is what I was thinking. Of course, I had been reading about the symptoms on-line…which I don’t recommend. Unfortunately for acid reflux you pretty much diagnose when you rule out about 10 other things. You could go in and have an endoscopy, but why go through all that if you don’t have to??? So, she prescribes the medication for that. Brock is still convinced that it is just a virus and that he doesn’t need the meds. So, we don’t get them filled and we were just going to see if it happened again.
Thursday morning about 5:30, he throws up again. We get the script filled and he starts taking the meds at night before he goes to bed. So Friday and Saturday, he doesn’t throw up and we think problem solved. I give Brock the whole I told ya so and think we have healed the boy.
Sunday morning, he throws up again, but this time it is different. He throws up all day. He wasn’t holding anything down. Strangely, in between his bouts with vomiting, he is completely fine. He still wants to eat and does so, but then throws everything up.
So, I decide that Monday morning I am going to just show up at the health center bright and early and make them see me. (Another side note: It is virtually impossible to get an appointment at the health center if you are actually sick and need to see one. If you can schedule it a month early, no problems.) She had also told me that if he didn’t stop throwing up to just bring him in without an appointment and that she would see him. So, she does all her “doctor stuff” and is baffled by what is going on. She weighs him and he had lost only 1 pound. We decide to do some blood work and see if that tells us what is going on. She said that if the bloodwork comes back normal, that we need to make an appointment with a Gastroenterologist. Brock takes him to get his blood work and Jax was a champ. Brock said they took 4 vials of blood and Jax cried for maybe 3 seconds. After the blood work, Brock takes him up to the office with him and Jax sleeps a good part of the day but the rest of the day he just kinda stared into space. He threw up almost every two hours that afternoon. It really freaked Brock and his parents out…Brock did not really tell me this because he knew I would freak out. When we all got home, Jax perked up and seemed much better. If he wouldn’t of, we would have taken him to the ER.
Tuesday morning, he wakes up throwing up again. So we decide that Brock will stay home in the morning and then I will come home at lunch and he can then go to work in the afternoon. We get some of the blood results back and everything looks pretty normal. His white blood cell count is high but that just proves that his little body is trying to fight something off….could be a virus or something else. We are all still baffled by what this could be. So I call and make an appointment with the Gastrenterologist. (This was a story in itself, which I will spare you, but what a whip). They can’t see him until the following Tuesday. So we go home and he throws up all night and has diarrhea.
We wake up Wednesday with the same thing. I talk to the doctor again and she wants me to come get some containers to collect a stool sample from him. (There is another story, but I will spare you the details. I’m sure you are okay with that!) So, we begin trying to collect these samples, but by this time, by poor, sweet boy is drained of everything. He wasn’t dehydrated, but everything he ate was coming back up. Sometimes he would throw up within the hour and sometimes he would throw up 6 hours later. So weird. That night I get a little freaked out because he had no energy and was sleeping more than he was awake. So I call a doctor who happens to also be an elder at our church. I knew that they would be in a meeting so I called my father-in-law’s phone and asked him to have Ken call me. I gave the whole, long story to him and he suggested that I see either the Gastroenterologist or my pediatrician (for a second opinion) the next day.
As you can imagine, I had all kinds of horrible, crazy thoughts rolling around in my head about what could possibly be wrong with him. When I got off the phone with Ken, I had a missed call. It was a friend who’s son has been going through a horrible fight with Cancer. I couldn’t believe that they were worried about us and what we were going through when they were going through a parent’s worst nightmare. She told me that what Jax was going through sounded a lot like what he had gone through in the beginning and wanted me to know what to ask for from the doctors. I really appreciated her call because it was sweet to know they were thinking of us and I knew exactly what to ask the doctor for but it also made it that more apparent in my mind that my son may have something that wasn’t an easy fix. To say that night was a hard, hard night doesn’t even begin to describe it. I prayed, I prayed and I prayed some more. My friend’s faith through her son’s illness is tremendous and I just kept thinking that if she could get through this with that much faith and trust in God, that maybe I could to.
Thursday, we call the Gastroenterologist and they won’t see us so I call Dr. Cramer. Of course, she will see us. I have never, not been able to get a same day appointment with her. She is a wonderful doctor, her bedside manner could use a little help, but she knows her stuff. Anyways, the appointment isn’t until 2:15, so we hang out all day. Of course this day, he is happy and laughing…not throwing up.
Whenever I hear of someone getting bad news…a bad report from a doctor, getting ‘that’ phone call about a loved one, you know anything life changing, I always think, I bet they wish they could go back to the day before. The day before their lives changed forever. As we drove to the doctor’s office, I couldn’t help but wonder, is this my day? The day my life will change forever. Am I going to leave here knowing that my child is going to have the fight of his life? Are we going to be in and out of hospitals for the next few years or for the rest of his life? Will I have to live without my child one day too soon?
We go in, give her the long story, and she puts the stethoscope to his stomach and says, “He has a parasite.” While I should have been thinking “EWWWWWW”, I think those were the most beautiful words I had ever heard. I instantly started crying. In my head, I was thinking….he’s not dying…now we have a diagnosis and it is fixable. Brock told the doctor why I was crying and what was going through my head. She then said….Do you remember the first question I asked? Is he having headaches? She said if we would have answered yes, she would have had a whole new line of questioning and probably would have been sending us to Children’s then. She then checked his eyes like my friend had told me to have them do and he was fine. She gave us the script and said that he would poop it out. He would be fine in about 24 hours…..24 hours. This had been going on for 2 weeks. On the way out, I said a million prayers of thanksgiving and cried. I just kept crying. I was thankful for the good news that I got, but still mindful of so many that didn’t get the good news.
Thursday night he throws up quite a bit, but we expected that because the meds hadn’t had a chance to work yet.
So we give him the medicine and he goes to school and goes on the field trip that he wanted to go on so bad. He was completely fine all through the weekend. We were sure he was completely fine. He ate like a pig. He had a lot to make up for.
Tuesday around 10:30 or so, Jaxson’s teacher calls and says he isn’t feeling well and wants to talk to me. What a blessing it is to work at the same school and get these kinds of perks. So he comes down and says that his stomach hurts and wants to lie down in my room. After about 5 minutes, he gets up and wants to go back to class. I check on him after lunch and he seemed fine. I had parent/teacher conferences late so I wasn’t home with him but Brock said he ate like a crazy man.
Wednesday morning at 3:30, Jax crawls into bed with me and is awfully wriggly. He gets up a couple times to go to the bathroom but then about 5:30, he starts throwing up. He throws up about 10 times between 5:30 and 7:00 along with some really nasty diarrhea. So, I call the doctor on the way to school and she tells me to call the insurance company and find out what my benefits are if I have to take him to the ER. So, I do all of that and call her back and we decide to take him in. I was a mess because at this point Jax is skin and bones and I didn’t know how his little body could take throwing up again like that. I knew he wasn’t dehydrated…yet.
So, we get to Children’s and they listen to the symptoms and she decides to do more blood tests on him. Of course, by this time, he is no longer throwing up and looks like a perfectly healthy little boy that is just skinny and a little pale. She comes out after most of the blood tests are back and says that they are normal. She is only waiting on one more and we can go. Apparently, because he was so skinny and she could see every bone in his body, she was looking at the test for Lukemia. Thankfully, the test is negative for Lukemia, but even the possibility gives me the creeps. She leaves the room and I have a little, mini break down. She walks back through and asks if I’m crying. I said, 'I’m just a bit frustrated. My son has been throwing up for 3 weeks now. He is skin and bones. I figured that coming to Children’s I would leave with a diagnosis and know how to fix him. Now, I’m about to leave and still have no idea what is wrong with him.' She tells me to just wait until the rest of the results come back. She comes back a few minutes later and tells us that his white blood cell count is high but that just means he is fighting something off….really? seriously? I never would have thought that! UGH!
So we start asking questions. What about his gall bladder…she said that it would be very rare for a child his age to have an issue with his gall bladder. Brock asks about an obstruction…she says that if he had one that when she was pushing on his stomach, he would be in pain but that if we want, we can do an xray. I say do it. We ask her to check his urine and she also does a strep test. All of this comes back negative. We also find out that the stool sample that he gave isn’t enough so they want another one. By this time, it is 1:00 and I said, “He threw up 10 times this morning with diarrhea and hasn’t eaten anything since. He has nothing to make the diarrhea. She says well, then they’ll have to do that through your pediatrician’s office. My problem with this is that she says that we aren’t doing anything to help him and we won’t know anything until we get the stool cultures back, which will be 2 or 3 days. I’m thinking by the time we leave Children’s, go get the stuff to catch the poop with, and get home to catch it, it will be after 5 and we won’t even be able to start the process until tomorrow, which means we won’t know anything until Monday….so he was going to go through this for several more days before he got any relief. I was not happy but I felt like they had done everything they could at this point. She called Dr. Cramer. They didn’t like each other very much. The ER doctor was just sure that it was a bacterial infection and Dr. Cramer was just sure that it was Giardia. Dr. Cramer was hoping that they would get Jax started on the meds for Giardia but the ER doc was not having it. So, I kinda force them to give me the supplies to collect the stool sample. My plan is to stop and eat something somewhere and hope he has a bowel movement so that we could just drop it off at Dr. Cramer’s office. I call Dr. Cramer and I could tell she wasn’t very impressed by the ER doc and wanted to go ahead and put him on the meds for Giardia and still collect the stool samples. So we are supposed to stop by her office and collect the containers and get the script. So, we pulled up at a restaurant and Jax started crying and said that he just wanted to go home. So, instead we just went and go the script containers and went home.
So that is where we are now. I have spent a good part of the night collecting stool samples. I will spare you the details, but I will tell you that this is my least favorite part of being a mother.
I keep saying that it takes a village to raise a child and that we have a great village. I have several close friends, family, co-workers that are much, much more, church family, and several just plain acquaintances that have reached out to us. We have been prayed for by more people than I can count and there are so many friends that are just waiting for my next update on Jax. We have had dinner brought to us and friends that have helped us with the other 3 kiddos. I am blessed beyond measure. Please know that if you have left a FB message or sent an email or text and I have not replied…it does not mean that I didn’t read it, or appreciate it. I just haven’t had much time to do it. I usually read them on my phone in between doing something for one of the kids. I love you all and I can feel the love coming my way. "
So that was my Facebook "note". Jax took the Giardia medication and it worked! You usually get Giardia from swimming in the lake or messing with stale, stagnant water. The doctor, as well as Brock and I, are fairly sure that he got it from the fair.
I seriously don't think I've ever been so scared of anything in my life. I don't ever want to go through anything like that, ever again!
On Wednesday, we wanted to take the kids sledding again. There was a snow storm coming so we decided to leave early to try to beat the snow storm. We got up the mountain...barely. It was not safe to drive up there, so we changed our mind and decided to go to another town down the mountain, Creede. It was the neatest little town. We had a lot of fun with Laurie, Gary, Emily and Caroline.
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Friday morning, we drove the rest of the way home...it seemed like it was taking forever but we were so happy to be home. We stopped to eat at a Dairy Queen too.
