Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Sawyer’s in the Hospital

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As an infant, Sawyer was diagnosed with allergic colitis.  He was failure to thrive because his little body suffered from malabsorption caused by the colitis.  Sawyer’s daddy has ulcerative colitis, so it’s believe Sawyer inherited this genetic autoimmune disease.

 

Sawyer has not had any flare-ups in about ten years, which we’ve been most grateful for.  He suffers from severe food allergies, but as long as Sawyer avoids the foods/ingredients he’s allergic to, he’s fine. 

 

Over the past couple of months, Sawyer has started to slowly exhibit symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders.  He began having blood in his stool, so we took the first available appointment with his gastroenterologist, which wasn’t until August 7.  In the past two weeks, Sawyer began having intense pain, so his pediatrician ordered some labs.

 

Friday evening the labs came back with some extreme levels of a variety of things, mainly inflammatory markers that were sky-high elevated, indicating Sawyer was indeed having a gastro flare-up of some sort.  Our pediatrician consulted with Sawyer’s gastroenterologist, and they agreed Sawyer was top priority for an appointment with GI.

 

However, Monday morning (yesterday) came, and the GI office said they wouldn’t be able to fit him in unless there was a cancellation, which most likely wouldn’t occur until the end of this week.  Poor Sawyer was in such intense pain that we decided it would be best to go to the ER of Dell Children’s Hospital.

 

Sawyer’s gastroenterologist saw him in the ER, and after a physical examination, reviewing the labs from our pediatrician, and asking Sawyer a bunch of questions, he said, “Sawyer, is it OK if I talk to your mom privately in another room for a few minutes?”

 

That’s never a good sign.

 

The gastroenterologist explained that he believes Sawyer has Crohn’s Disease, along with another disease/disorder that causes inflammation and pain (can’t recall the name right now). 

 

Sawyer was immediately admitted to the hospital, and was (is) considered acutely ill.  He is scheduled to have a colonoscopy, endoscopy, and barium swallow test around 9AM Tuesday so that his gastroenterologist will be able to diagnose him more accurately and come up with a treatment plan.

 

Poor Sawyer was already feeling absolutely miserable with a pain of 8 or 9 (out of 10), and then they had to insert an NG tube and hook him up to 3 liters of GoLYTELY, a horribly nasty liquid that cleans out the gut/colon.  (At least he didn’t have to drink the stuff!)  After only 10 minutes of getting hooked up to the solution, Sawyer got super nauseated.  The nurse gave him Zofran, but after about 1/3 of the first of 3 liters was in his stomach, Sawyer violently vomited up all of the contents of his stomach.  There was blood in his vomit.  There’s also blood in his stool.  He’s a very sick kiddo, and my  heart is aching for him.

 

My heart is also aching over another circumstance that I haven’t shared yet.  I’ve been working on that post and hope to share it soon.

 

Our family has really been under attack lately, so we appreciate your prayers.  We know the battle is His and He is VICTORIOUS.  Praising Him through this storm!  Blessed be the name of the Lord, who gives and takes away.  My heart will choose to say, “Blessed be His name.”

 

PS   Rejoice with us that Project HOPEFUL won the $50,000 grant!!!!!!  Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO much for voting and sharing and helping them win this money that will help so many overlooked, forgotten, waiting, suffering children around the world.  We are thrilled that you helped make this possible, and we’re eager to see how God directs this money and multiplies it to help the least of these.

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