The Past Eleven Days

It honestly bugs me that I don't have the convenience of my phone to update this. It would be so nice to enter a simple one or two line update via text message. Unfortunately that's not working, so I will try to piece together what's been going on over the past 11 days from my Facebook posts, and my memory.

The last post mentioned vomiting and seeking out an allergy consult. I successfully scheduled an appointment with a Physician's Assistant at the base for Monday afternoon at 4 p.m. (Same day as the last post.) When we got there, Olivia's temperature read 102.8. Obviously not a good sign. The PA heard our concern about the allergies, but, due to the fever, it was put on the back burner, since we needed to determine what was causing it.

The base clinic and all of it's facilities close at 5 p.m., so we were sent to Children's Hospital to have a chest x-ray, urinalysis and bloodwork to rule out pneumonia or infection. We went home to get her personal pharmacy and clothes for her, the baby, and ourselves, expecting she may be admitted. It turns out that Dave's mom, Robin, and Jack were all sick as well. Now it seemed to be unrelated to the surgery after all. Dave started to feel a little woozy on the way up, and ended up sick while we were waiting in the Emergency Department.

Olivia's fever reached 103.5 by the time they saw her, so they gave her a dose of Tylenol. She was started on IV fluids to prevent dehydration. They ran the tests and admitted her while they waited for the results. I stayed overnight with her. He stayed at Kelly's place in Arlington with Mom, Kelly and Avery.

In the morning, the team of doctors came in and determined that Olivia's illness was due to a virus. I was overwhelmed at this point. I decided to speak up and let them know that as much as I understand that this is likely the answer to the acute problem, there is still an underlying issue that we have not figured out. I continued that it is frustrating to have answers to a snippet of the overall condition, but the underlying never being addressed because it is, uh... underlying. There was a very compassionate doctor in the midst of this team that took time to sit down with us and get the whole picture. It took quite a bit of time, but in the end we had a doctor who understood the vast scope of what Olivia has been going through over the past several months with the vomiting. He put in a consult with the Allergists there as well as the GI doctors on staff at Children's. We met with both of them while Olivia was in-patient. Our theory that there is an allergy component seems like a very reasonable hypothesis. She will have allergy testing done on April 11th.

Before I met the GI doctor I thought that maybe having a second perspective on the GI issue would be a good idea. I have complete confidence in the GI doctor she has at Bethesda, but a new perspective may help us understand something differently. Preparation for the scoliosis surgery has always been the purpose of seeing the GI doc. It's been a while since I've met a doctor who has made me feel like I'm wasting his time. This doctor reset that timeline. He was very quick to make a diagnosis without fully understanding the scope of the issue. Actually within 5 minutes he made three different diasnosises (how do you make that word plural???), and they contradicted each other. Dr. Min, we'll stick with you. Wouldn't recommend that doctor's opinion to anyone.

There are more doctor's visits on the horizon:
April 6 - Follow-up with the PA @ PAX River
April 9 - Dr. Min, GI @ Bethesda
April 11 - Allergy testing @ Children's 11 a.m.
Surgery follow-up 1:30 p.m.
April 29 - Seating clinic to talk about new equipment @ Bethesda

I need to try to schedule something with the Neurologist. Will try to schedule for the same day as the Seating Clinic. Here's hoping!

Oh, by the way, Olivia was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, March 21. Her pain medicine was reordered, but doesn't seem that we'll need to have it filled, as Tylenol has been doing the trick for the past 2 days.
Her scar looks really good. She is clear to get a bath now, and we'll do that later today. Things are looking up!