Thursday, January 21, 2010

Well, a planned clinic visit would be no fun

We were supposed to go to clinic next Thursday. We went today. No emergencies or anything, just enough small things adding up that they figured they'd bring us in. By us, I mean me and Blaise, as Ben is out of town for work. Fun first: my first time ever driving in Boston. I've driven in Cambridge, but not Boston. You wouldn't think the width of a river would make such a big difference but let me tell you.

Here's what was on the agenda: the leak at her g-tube site, advancing her feeding and the nightly vomiting episodes. What nightly vomiting episodes? Almost every night for about a week and a half right around bedtime, Blaise has vomited significantly. She's fine the rest of the time, although her reflux has seemed worse, her "output" is a little runny and she loses interest in food as the day goes on. No fever, no vomiting other times of the day. It's happened before we lay her down for the night and after, before her omeprozole and after, when she eats a lot during the day and when she eats a more moderate amount. We haven't introduced any new foods. Ooo, another short gut mystery, another short notice clinic visit.

The plan: we're going to replace her button with a bigger size to help with the leaking. The bigger size has to be special ordered, but it should be in next week. We're going to hold off on anything interesting with feeds until we can get this runny stool/vomiting business resolved. And to resolve that, we're going to start with the leading hypothesis: bacterial overgrowth presenting kind of weirdly. Blaise has a history of BO presenting weirdly (specifically, presenting as eosinophilic colitis, a typical allergic response), so we're hitting her with another round of Flagyl and crossing our fingers.

Aside from all that, Blaise is great (except right after she throws up, when she's pretty upset). "Good Night, Gorilla," a gift from our friend Cally during Mystery Hunt, might have replaced "That's not my Monster" as Blaise's favorite book. I was even convinced she was trying to say "gorilla" a couple of times today. We ran into her surgeon while we were waiting for our clinic appointment and he was absolutely delighted with how she looked. He hadn't seen her in nearly 7 months. She's come a very long way since then. Blaise blew a raspberry at him and then tried to take the art off the wall. His response: "That's what I like to see!" I'm not sure I get surgeons but Blaise thought it was funny. I spent the rest of the visit stopping her from taking paintings and things off the walls.

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