Ugh

It wouldn't be a normal week in our house without a trip to ER would it? We were minutes away from going today, but thankfully nephrology called me on my cell phone just as I was about to pull into the ER and diverted us to their office.

Yesterday afternoon Stephen started throwing up his milk after each feeding. He's definitely spit up for me plenty of times before, but this was different. He was wreching so hard and it's just unusual for him to throw up more than once in a day. And then he threw up in the middle of the night while he was hooked up to his feeding pump. Strange. Then this morning after I nursed him, he was soaking wet. His g-tube had leaked a large amount of milk out the actual hole in his stomach.

So I called the pediatrician and she decided to page Stephen's g-tube doctor. While we waited for him to call back, Stephen vomited again. So I started packing up some of his things assuming Dr. Friehling (his pediatrician) would definitely send us to the ER. Unfortunately, Dr. Friehling never got a return call from Dr. Lee, Stephen's g-tube doctor, which I am beyond annoyed about. So off to the ER we went.

While we were on the way to the hospital, nephrology got word we were heading to the hospital and wanted to see him first. So we headed to see Dr. Fildes and for them to get a sample of his dialysis fluid just to make sure there was no infection. No infection and we were cleared by nephrology. Dr. Fildes suggested we head upstairs to the g-tube group so they could see him without going to the hospital as well. Unfortunately, they weren't as accommodating and told me they could fit Stephen in tomorrow. Not acceptable, especially considering none of their doctors have even seen him since he left the NICU. Not even when he was in the hospital for five days. Each time we've gone, we've only seen the nurse practitioner.

Luckily Dr. Fildes felt the same way I did and called them himself to make sure they saw us today. To make a long story short, the doctor finally saw us and has decided to send Stephen for an upper GI test tomorrow. That way we can rule out any serious GI issues and they can prescribe him some stronger reflux medicine. We also made it very clear that it was unacceptable for him to never see a doctor and thankfully, they agreed. At least they now know that Bill and I are extremely serious about getting Stephen the right care.

We are back home and Stephen seems to be doing much better with his feeds. Thank goodness! I was getting a little tired of getting thrown up on and changing his clothes every three hours. But we'll find out tomorrow for sure what the issue is.