What's Up With Jack?

I won't keep anyone in suspense - Jack's endoscopy revealed some "severe" lesions in his esophagus due to his acid reflux. He also had two ear infections which have been treated since Sunday evening with antibiotics. With the ear infections mending he has started to eat again and we're told that once the medication starts to heal his wounds we will see the return of the veracious eater we knew a month ago. We're also told that the medication(s) should help prevent this from happening in the future. Jack is still tired, but is quickly getting back to his old self, i.e.:









For those of you that have not heard the full story we have been in and out of the pediatricians office for the last month. Jack's eating decreased and he was having trouble sleeping at night - usually waking up in pain. We tried switching around his acid reflux medication, thickening his bottles, changing formulas, keeping him elevated, etc with no avail. He lost over a pound in the last two weeks.

Things came to a head this weekend, on Saturday he was running a fever and acting very upset. He is literally one of the happiest babies I've ever seen, so this was quite unlike him. We were able to get the fever down by the evening, but he woke up in the middle of the night in severe pain. By Sunday morning he hadn't eaten anything for several hours and was beginning to look dehydrated. We force-fed him Pedialyte with a syringe (something we have been doing for several weeks) but he still looked bad. At noon we brought him to the ER, and he was admitted to the hospital by 6 PM. They took blood and X-rays, all of which came back OK. He had two ear infections which they began treating. He refused to eat anything for the remainder of Sunday, but they had him hooked up to an IV so he remained hydrated. He refused to eat all day Monday, but on Tuesday he had his Upper-GI which wasn't very telling, although it did confirm his acid reflux. After the test we tried to feed him a thickened bottle and - hooray - he ate a whopping 7 oz. Today he had his endoscopy and the news was good, at least for me. I think I would have been more worried had they not found an explaination for is decreased appetite.

Coincidentally, one of the pediatric nurse's son had the same exact problem a few months ago. She told her pediatrician that her son just wasn't right and after several weeks of wrangling she brought him in in tears and said they needed to fix him. After an upper-GI and endoscopy he had the same diagnosis and we're told he is doing well and eating like a horse after a months worth of recuperation, which is quite reassuring.

I want to thank everyone for their well wishes and prayers - I was especially touched by Katy's blogs and the kindness of her friends. I hope to meet them when we finally make it to Kentucky.