Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The Diagnosis…Eosinophilic Esophagitis

Kelsie has complained of a tummy ache off and on for as long as I can remember over the past 8 to 10 months.  We always thought it was her eating too much, too fast, she was hungry, had to use the bathroom, or maybe a little bit of heart burn.
We quickly ruled out the bathroom issue and quickly put in the thought of heart burn. {acid reflux} We thought this, because she was diagnosed with it when she was an infant, but grew out of it by the time she was on solid foods.  Our first plan on action was to buy Tums.  They are after all a medicine that I grew up chomping on whenever I had a tummy ache.  Well, we went through nearly a whole bottle, maxing out, and sometimes going over the recommended dosage.  I decided that it was time to see the dr.  However, I was more concerned about her missing school and my missing work and made an appt for a day that we were out of school on.  That appt time wasn’t going to be here soon enough so I had Zack go and buy Priolec OTC.  I sat for hours one early a.m. before she woke up to figure out on how to take it, since it was an “over 18” medication.
After reading every article I could find I decided that it would be safe to give her the dosage of one pill a day.  We started that on Sunday and by Tuesday there was still no relief.  I called the dr’s office and got her in that afternoon. 
The dr wanted to do an endoscopy on Thursday morning at 7am.  He’s not only her pediatrician, but he is also a gastroenterologist.  Lucky for us, because I read that an endoscopy is usually only done after trying other things!
Saying we were nervous was an understatement.  They were putting our baby to sleep! Granted, yes she’s 8, but none-the-less, our baby!!  Long story short, her stomach was fine, but her esophagus was extremely inflamed.  He did biopsy’s that we had to wait until yesterday to get the results.  Scared to death was also an understatement when your waiting on biopsy results!
I talked to the nurse yesterday afternoon and she told me the results…eosinophilic esophagitis. What the heck?  Well, the nurse told me that it’s allergies that cause it.  It will never itself go away, and we have to treat whatever allergy is causing it.  Seasonal or food.  Thing is, Kelsie is allergic to everything seasonal and takes Zyrtec daily for it.  Chances are, it’s a food.  What food?  How the heck should I know!  But I do know that we go to her dr on Friday to talk over treatment options/plans and we will be seeing an allergist. 
I have been bookmarking and reading every article I could find on EE. {that’s the condensed name} I have found that it usually stems from milk, seafood, wheat, or eggs.  Well, she drinks milk all the time, wheat and eggs, heck they are in everything!  And she loves seafood! 
We are just in a state of nothingness at the moment until we find out what the allergy is and what the heck we will do next!

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