Acid Reflux

Oh My Goodness! 

I'm so glad that these appointments are over. 

We started out with an ultrasound on his kidneys and adrenal gland. We learned that the hemorrhage has gotten smaller meaning that it's resolving itself.  YAY!  His kidneys still look a little enlarged, but the Urologist isn't too concerned about it yet.  We'll just keep watching them.

After that we headed over to ENT.  Carter has been doing well with his breathing, but occasionally he gets a little whistle in his throat and whenever that happens it seems like his breathing gets a little heavy too.  I thought for sure that he had Laryngomalacia, and Carter's Pediatrician did too.  The ENT did a Laryngoscopy which is where he took a long wire which is about as thin as spaghetti and pushed it through Carter's nose and into his throat.  It has a tiny camera on the end that showed us what is going on in Carter's throat.  It turns out that the whole area was VERY red and inflamed proving once and for all that Carter definitely has acid reflux.  We added another reflux med (Zantac) and are going to try getting him off of the continuous feeds at night.  The ENT pointed out that if your stomach is being continuously fed, it will continuously produce acid.  Hopefully this works.  Honestly, Carter has been doing well, but after seeing how red and inflamed his throat was, he must really be miserable.  I hope we can help this with medication and no surgery is needed.

I am a little bit mad at myself over this whole thing.  Way back when Carter was in the NICU, he had another Laryngoscopy done which showed similar results.  Things are a little fuzzy for me, but I remember that at some point they took him off of one of the medications and after another test the NICU docs decided that he actually didn't have it. I fought to keep Carter on the Prevacid, but I should have fought to keep him on the Zantac too.  I remember Carter's nurses telling me that he needed to be on both, but I gave up the fight at one medication.  At least now we have proof, and can move on.

Doctor's Appointments Yuck!

Tomorrow is the big day.  We're taking Carter to see what the status is on his Adrenal Hemorrhage. We have an appointment to have the ultrasound done in the afternoon followed by an appointment with his Urologist and ENT.  The ENT obviously has nothing to do with the Hemorrhage, but they had an opening so we decided to try and kill two birds with one stone.

Have I mentioned lately that I really hate doctor's appointments?  I mean, I know that they are what is best for Carter, but I still hate them. Among many things, I hate the nervousness that I feel before we go to them. Our little experience with the plastic surgeon last week is exactly what I'm talking about. Not knowing if we're going to find out something new about Carter's condition gets to me every time. It scares me to think that he'll have to have additional surgeries.  I'm not naive... I know that new things are going to come up, but it's the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

These next two weeks are full of appointments that I'm especially nervous for. Tomorrow, I'm nervous for the ultrasound because I REALLY want the hemorrhage to have cleared up on it's own.  Nervous for the Urology appointment because I'm hoping that his Kidneys look better from the last ultrasound.  Nervous for the ENT appointment because I plan to talk to him more about Carter's airway. I'm ready to move on from here.  Wish us luck! I'll update tomorrow when we get home.

Today's Appointment

Didn't go terribly, but it didn't go well either.

We had an appointment with Urology today to check on little C's Kidneys.  First was an ultrasound where the tech discovered that Carter has an Adrenal Hemorrhage. Basically, his Adrenal Gland is bleeding.  Yuck!  Just the sound of those words is scary.  The Hemorrhage just looked like a ball with some fibers in it.  I could tell before they even told us that it wasn't supposed to be there.  The Radiologist and Urologist agree that the best thing to do is just to watch it.  We have to go back in six weeks to be sure that it's going away on it's own.  If it doesn't, then we'll have to do something more drastic.  I'm really wondering what has caused this since it seems that it is usually caused by either a blow to the side (which has not happened), or stress.  Carter certainly doesn't seem stressed to me, and he hasn't had anything happen too recently that would cause his body stress unless you count just living for him. Poor little one.  The Urologist told us that he's never seen one of these where it didn't end up fixing itself, but honestly that didn't give me much peace of mind.  Obviously Carter makes his own rules.
His kidneys also look more dilated than they did on the last ultrasound.  The doctor thinks that it's defnitely because of his Vesicoureteral Reflux.
Vesi what?
Vesicoureteral Reflux is one of the abnormalities Carter was born with.  Basically it means that his urine flows back up through his ureters and into his kidneys.  The problem is that this can cause Urinary Tract Infections very easily.  Carter has to take a low dose of antibiotics every day to prevent them.  Sometimes kids outgrow this, but it looks like C's still got it. He gets another test to see if it's improved in six more months. If it doesn't go away, then there is a surgery to correct it.  I guess we'll find out in six weeks if he's improving with either of these things.  *sigh*