Nick's Health Update

We were able to get into the Pediatric specialist early (after I called and told them my concerns about waiting until August to do the biopsy when I am due just a couple weeks after that...didn't really want to be traveling to a specialist when I was about two weeks from delivery).

Last week the doctor's office called on Monday and said that they had an opening for a consult the next day. After talking with the doctor for over an hour about all of Nick's many crazy issues, he decided that we should just get the biopsy over with. That afternoon we were informed that they were able to set Nick up to have his biopsy and scope on Wednesday morning. They really bent over backwards to accommodate us.

So we've now ruled out what we though Nick had, Eosinophilic Esophagitis. Nick is being treated for chronic esophagitis and some stomach issues (basically really bad acid in his stomach). We've been on some new meds for a week now and Nick is...sort of doing better. He's sleeping better, but still not eating or drinking much and he's still pretty inconsolable sometimes. If things don't improve in about another week or so, we'll have to do a feeding tube, yuck! In the meantime, we're also still up in the air about why his white blood cell count is triple what is should be (should be 0-12 and he is at 32). Guess we'll just keep waiting things out and seeing if things improve.

Other than that...No we still didn't find out what the gender of this next baby is. We're still going to be surprised (much to the amazement of all who really know me and how anal I am). Jeff & Ryan think it's a girl and I think it's a...well I just think it's a baby. We have about??? 4 weeks or so to go (August 25), but I'm still hoping to go over a little and wait until September 1st to have this baby because I like the idea of a September birthday better than an August birthday. I guess the school teacher in me just thinks September sounds better.

I Haven't Dropped off the Face of the Earth

The last few months have been so busy and crazy that I really haven't even thought about blogging.

Nick had tubes put in his ears in March and by the end of May we realized that he was in that "1% that may still get ear infections after tubes" when both his ear drums ruptured. He was fairly miserable because I kept not going to the doctor...thinking it couldn't possibly be an ear infection. After two weeks, his ears finally cleared up and we were good for about a week or maybe two when Nick came down with the flu for two weeks.

(None of us did much sleeping during the two weeks of Nick having the flu...
we just let him sleep wherever he would crash. Most of the time he slept of the couch)

After two weeks and a two pound weight-loss, his doctor had him admitted to the hospital for a series of tests and some much-needed fluids. We checked in and Nick pretty much screamed from the moment we checked in, throughout the night, and well into the morning. When his doctor came to check on him at noon the next day he told us that he was actually going to release Nick due to the fact that he (Dr. Miller) had called the nurses station at 10:00pm and was told that Nick was screaming and he called at midnight and Nick was still screaming and he called at 4:30 am and Nick was still screaming...all the while I was pacing the pediatric floor with him (and my giant belly) to try to keep him somewhat appeased. At 5:00am the nurses took him on a 45 minute wagon-ride so that I could catch a quick nap before morning arrived. By noon he wasn't really showing signs of improvement, but we couldn't do another night in the hospital and Dr. Miller thought we should go home and try things for a day or two since Nick had been re-hydrated through IV's while he screamed all night.
When Nick's doctor released him he told us that they actually did find a few things of concern that could contribute to Nick having been an impossible baby for the last year and a half. I won't go into all the details, but the two temporary medications they have put him on have definitely helped him be more happy and content. The medicines are temporary until we can see a specialist on the 28th of July and then Nick will have a BIOPSY (scary word) of his esophagus on August 7th. Jeff likes to tell people that the name of what is wrong with Nick is the word elephant with some extra p's, s's, t's, & i's. It's a really long word!

In the middle of the whole flu thing, we had the craziest rainstorm that I have ever seen. Jeff was standing at the front window watching it rain and commented that someone was going to get flooded from this torrential downpour. I looked out the kitchen window into the backyard and saw a waterfall of water coming towards our house and told Jeff it wasn't someone that was going to get flooded, it was us! He threw on his shoes and ran out to work on a trench away from our house while I called our ever-so-helpful neighbor, Andy, to come help (I wasn't much help with my enlarged belly and Nick having the flu). We diverted a major crisis thanks to Jeff and
Andy's quick work on getting a trench to divert the water.

So, that's the latest at our house. It is now the middle of July and I feel like summer is flying by. It is just now getting hot enough to go to the pool, June was super-cold and we actually wore pants quite a few of the days and even sweatshirts on some days. I hope the rest of the summer goes a little more smooth than the first part, but I don't anticipate it happening between the consults, our ward girl's camp, the biopsy, and then shortly thereafter we'll add another little one to our family!