Crohn's

Many people have asked about our spunky little girl.  We thought that the easiest way to explain things would be by using our old blog.  So...here we are again.  Hold on because this is a long one!!

On November 22nd, I picked P up from the sitter and was told that there was blood in her stool that day.  I didn't freak out right away because that can mean many things.  We decided just to watch it throughout the weekend and if it didn't clear up, we would call the doctor.  We went to the Lion's game on Thanksgiving.  On one trip to the bathroom, there was a A LOT of blood.  Still trying not to panic.  It only seemed to get worse so we made an appointment with our pediatrician.  It was decided to treat it as a fissure (small tear).  I called again on December 5th because nothing had changed at all.  The pediatrician sent us to the ER.  She let us choose between U of M Mott Children's Hospital and Detroit Children's Hospital.  We decided to head to Mott.  Penny underwent some physical exams, X-rays and blood work.  Nothing was found.  So we were given a referral to Mott Pediatric Gastroenterology.

Chilling with Daisy

She did NOT like getting an IV put in.  But soon became very curious.

And she is now at her wits end!!  Poor girl!

We met with Mott's Pediatric Gastroenterology on December 16th.  We were instructed to drop off a bunch of "collections" to our local lab.  Joel "manned up" (Is "manned" even a word??) and collected all of the stool samples.  One of the samples tests for intestinal infections but takes about 10 days for the results.  So we were put on a powerful antibiotic in hopes of treating the infection quickly...if that was in fact what it was.  It was a painful 10 days!  She had to take the antibiotic 3 times a day and it did NOT taste good.  The first few days we saw a lot of it come back up.  :( BUT we finally got in our groove and she was a champ!!  She did a great job finishing the antibiotic.   We saw some of her spunk come back.  We were very hopeful that the antibiotic was taking care of the problem.  During this time we also scheduled the upper and lower scope...just in case.  As luck would have it, there was no need for the antibiotic because there wasn't an infection.  We were instructed to move ahead with the scope.

We went for the scope on Wednesday, January 11th.  For those of you who know me, know that at this point, I am not handling this well.  I was a mess leading up the 11th.  Poor Joel had to deal with the patient and the patient's emotional wreck of a mom!  P did great during the procedures and did pretty good coming out of it as well.  Joel and I were able to meet with Dr. Adler and Dr. Cardenas before going back to see P.  They showed us (aka Joel) pictures of P's digestive tract from top to bottom and everything in between.  Everything that they saw looked like Inflammatory Bowel Disease.  And under the umbrella of IBD, it was looking more like Crohn's than Ulcerative Colitis.  (It can be difficult to determine between the two in kids as little as P.)  We still needed to wait for some of the biopsy results.  We also have to do an MRI to get a full picture of what is going on.

We received a call on Friday, January 13th from Dr. Cardenas that confirmed P's diagnosis of Crohn's.  We have been placed on Dr. Cardenas' caseload and will begin meeting with her next week.  Stay tuned for what comes next in this journey.