My Brave Boy

For those of you who follow our lives, you know that our son has a multitude of health challenges that he fights...and is determined to defeat. One of them is his terrible, terrible vomiting episodes that send him straight to the hospital for several days. We've spent a total of 10 days in the hospital for this since last November.


We are blessed to have a new pediatric gastroenterologist at a hospital about 1 1/2 hours away. We made the trek yesterday and new instantly that his doctor will be a wonderful addition to his medical team. The decision among us was to schedule our 6 YO for an upper GI and lower GI (colonoscopy) series of scopes next month to look for what might be going on inside of him, hoping it will yield some answers. It could be as simple as a severe milk allergy that doesn't always show up on skin tests. We would simply eliminate all dairy and he'd be good to go. Or it could be a serious as you'll allow your mind to go...but we won't go there. Something we've never really considered is that he might have a condition that links all of his immunological issues together and that there is a regimen that will help all of them and make him feel better - rather than dealing with each of his individual episodes and constantly wondering what is wrong.


In the meantime, she took several labs (he never winced with the needle pokes) and gave us the instructions for "prepping" him for his tests next month. If you've ever had a colonoscopy {I'm sorry}, you know what this entails. I dread watching my 6 YO go through it, but she said children are much easier than adults with this (I hope she's right).


We feel that this doctor is very in tune with our little man. She gave us undivided attention for a very long time and made our son feel at ease, which is a challenge in of itself. He doesn't know what is coming up....we'll wait to cross that bridge. But I know he'll face it like he does everything - with an uncanny bravery and maturity that any parent would be proud of.