Awhile back, I had an entire post on the blog about Jackson and some of what we have been experiencing with him. Then, it somehow mysteriously disappeared. I have thought about that often, and I just had to remember that for some reason it just wasn't the right time to share that post.
Over the past few days, we have flooded email boxes and facebook walls of friends and family requesting prayers for Jackson. In March, we went in for our routine visit with Dr. Corbier, Jackson's neurologist, who addresses any concerns we have about him and notes his progress mainly from a speech/language perspective but also globally. We were so excited to share Jackson's progress at that time, and Dr. C was happy to hear this news. In our conversation, we brought up nutrition, and the fact that Jackson had experienced vomiting in January and March of this year. We recapped what had gone on with Jackson over the past two years.
Let's backtrack....J was diagnosed with acid reflux in April 2010. I even posted about this back then because he was literally vomiting and having diarrhea for a month. After researching J's symptoms and talking to his pediatrician, we decided to try him on Prevacid. Wow, the symptoms disappeared, and we even weaned him off of the meds later on in the year. Then, in 2011, we had a reoccurance. Throughout that year, he would wake up any random morning and start vomiting or dry heaving off and on for around an hour, take a nap, and then he was himself again. It always left Dave and me wondering if it was a stomach virus or acid reflux. In 2012, he went off of Prevacid, because they quit making it in his dosage. So, the pediatrician recommended Pepcid. He started Pepcid in January 2012, and he got sick on March 17th, April 4th, April 16th, and he started Prilosec in May. He got sick on June 2nd. :(
Dr. Corbier listened to us that day and revealed that he wasn't sure Jackson was experiencing acid reflux. He wondered if it was cyclic vomiting. Some children experience this and outgrow it by adolescence. Sometimes migraines develop after that. He suggested us take J to the GI in his office, and we followed his advice. She didn't offer a lot of advice but ordered blood tests, Upper GI, and a dairy free diet for a month for Jackson. She also asked Dr. C to order an EEG. All of this was to rule out metabolic disorders, seizures, celiac disease, etc. All proved to be normal. We went for our follow up in May with her. Since I knew all tests were normal, I decided to take Jackson without Dave. After all, he just started a new job and needed to work! It was at that visit that she told me that we really needed to rule out anything neurological, like a mass, cyst, etc...a mass, a MASS, you mean T-U-M-O-R, I asked! She told me that she didn't really think Jackson had a tumor, because those kids usually vomit for days and are very sick. But, she said Dr. Corbier would have to tell me how tumors present when they are first developing, very small, that is. Oh my, I was about to go over the edge! She strongly suggested an MRI for Jackson, but Dr. Corbier had to order those. Needless to say, I left worried. But, much to my surprise, around 7:00 that night, Dr. Corbier -- a very busy man, overloaded with patients and unable to take anymore -- called me at home. He had read the GI's notes and wanted to talk to me about tumors in children. He reassured me that children with brain tumors, even small ones, do NOT present themselves like Jackson. He said those children have headaches, are falling down, or having tremors on one side of their body; they try to point but their hand shakes and can't reach the target. Dr. C saw nothing like that when he examined Jackson, and we hadn't seen those things either. He said by the time they are vomiting, the child is in tremendous pain and the parents know there is something terribly wrong. The GI also talked about some sort of sac in the back of the brain that can cause vomiting...I tuned a lot of this out after I heard TUMOR. Dr. Corbier said that isn't what happens with those patients, either, and he has seen more than he can count. However, he couldn't tell me for sure that Jackson was not having a seizure in his sleep or some type of cyst wasn't present. Dr. C told me that he is not perfect with his predictions, but he has been doing this a long time, and he'd be shocked & surprised if he found anything abnormal on Jackson's MRI. The GI twisted his arm to order the MRI. Dr. Corbier doesn't typically request it for vomiting alone and/or verbal apraxia. He left the ultimate decision up to Dave and me, because he was not doing the MRI to prove something that he already knew as in the case of some of his little patients. He did want to prove to the GI doctor that she needed to explore the gut and not the brain, but he could not say that without looking at Jackson's brain. Dr. C did desire to look at the structure of Jackson's brain, and he felt that no matter what the MRI showed, we would ultimately be glad we did it. Dave and I knew that our mind and heart would not be settled without the MRI.
No comments:
Post a Comment