This was Lucy's 4th upper endoscopy. It was her first one where they placed a BRAVO in her esophagus. She had earlier been diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophogitis (you have little allergen "responders" lining your esophagus and it takes a beating) when she was 4. She has improved MUCH since then. We are VERY blessed. Her little esophagus used to just have furrows all up and down it...it looked awful. Now it's very healthy looking.
But since she's developed new food allergies, some have gotten more serious, she still vomits when she eats something she's allergic to, and she pops TUMS constantly on TOP of her nexium....her Dr wanted to have another look. WE LOVE OUR GI DOCTOR!
Anyway...I'm always emotional when she's put under, but generally SHE is always fine and even looks forward to it. (no siblings, peace & quiet, popsicles, she doesn't remember any of the bad parts, etc) This time was different...she was VERY anxious. Which made me anxious. BUT in the back of my head I was thinking... but we've totally done this before, she'll be fine.
Weeeell... they called me before hand to make sure I doubled up on her asthma meds before she went under anesthesia. They said it was very important for her airways to be nice and open. But the night before her procedure, she had some trouble with her asthma ..... so of course all my confidence that all would be well, flew out the window. And she was oh-so-pitiful!
She and I slept in 10 to 30 minute spurts for a grand total of probably 3 hours last night. I had Stephen move her mattress to the foot of our bed so I could help her when she woke up scared or coughing. We were very emotional when we "woke-up". Poor Stephen.
We went to the hospital at the designated time. I made sure everyone-and-their-brother knew she had had asthma trouble the night before...and that she had taken lots of benedryl, orapred and inhalers. I gave them WAY more details than they wanted to know and handed everyone the actual bottles of her meds so they could write it down correctly. They all kind of looked at me like..."cooky woman...she's done this before?"
But ya'll....she may be 10... but 10 sometimes seems so young to me!!! She's still my baby.
When she's not feeling good, she wants her Daddy. And that's fine with me...I want her precious self to have whatever she wants. But when they roll her out...and only DAddy gets to go. And that room looks so empty. And I would just like to run in there and remind all the Drs and nurses about her breathing ONE more time. I just started crying. Stephen had to come back and wait with me, of course. He saw me and kind of grinned and said..."you do this every time." Yep.
Bless her heart, she was SO miserable when she came back and was coming to. But I was just so giddy to have her back and breathing!! She's still mildly miserable due to the BRAVO, but it'll get better in a couple of days. We're trying our best to keep her comfortable and happy.
The BRAVO is a little capsule sized monitor that is suctioned to the inside of her esophagus. It will monitor the acid activity and send it to a little wireless pack that she wears around for 2 days. We return the pack (along with a chart of all her eating, sleeping, pain activity) to the ER on Wed morning. The BRAVO will fall off on its own and just go through her system. We just flush it.
Her Dr. said everything really looked good. But he didn't understand why she had undigested food in her tummy. (the last time she had eaten was a 6pm the night before) So I guess we wait for the biopsies and the BRAVO results...but I'm very happy it LOOKED healthy. He can normally tell just by looking.
So there you go. Hopefully that was enough info for family...probably a little too much for those who aren't. ;)
Thanks so much to those who prayed for my sweet Lula-belle....and her crazy mom.
And thank you, Merciful, Loving, Father for keeping her safe!
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