What I Didn't Say
I've held my tongue a long time. I've been processing...a lot.
The past year and a half have been a whirl wind, and I'm just now starting to see how it's affecting us all. In the summer of 2018 Grayson had been very ill for several months and we had just been given the run around and prescribed a lot of Miralax. He had become disinterested in soccer, was no longer bouncing on the trampoline, and mostly sat around reading. He had lost about 20% of his body weight, and at 7 years old weighed just over 40 lbs. and hadn't grown in a full year. I got wind that the kids had been assigned a new doctor, so I immediately called and made an appointment.
I walked in ready to plead my case, and ready to argue that we could not be sent away with yet another useless prescription for my son who was having 10 or more bowel movements a day. I walked in also on the verge of tears from watching my energetic, fun, wild boy slowly have all the love and joy drained out of him. We had tried absolutely everything that I could think of already and had been scolded by our previous doctor for taking out gluten. When he first started to lose weight (after several months of a slow decline), I thought it may be celiacs and decided we would try to figure it out on our own. But when I told the doctor she blamed me for his weight loss. I walked in with just a small hope that this would be different, that this doctor would help. During that first meeting, I sat across from a man whose 6 kids and sweet wife I knew. We had actually just recently been on a trip to a nearby castle with his family (wow, small world). He sat, and listened to the whole story, start to finish. He let me say my piece, and I finally felt peace. He looked me in the eye, and said that we would do more.
He did not roll his eyes, he did not send us away with a quick fix, or ignore my intuition. As I walked out, a slow silent tear rolled down my cheek as we walked to radiology. Grayson had a quick x-ray, that was our first step, and it was the first in a long train of events that finally led us to a nearby pediatric hospital.
That first x-ray revealed a little pea-sized something or other. Which led to an ultrasound where we found out that it was a gallstone. And finally were sent to the specialist in Trieste. We were meant to see the surgeon about gallbladder surgery, but she was out of town. So instead we met with the head of the GI department. The whole appointment was to find resolution for the gallstone, thinking that maybe that was a large contributor. The doctors had mentioned IBD, but to be honest I think I was a little in denial and hoped the gallstone would resolve a lot of the issues. We were dealing with the gallstone first anyway, or so I thought.
We all went to the appointment, and sat in a small office while the doctor asked a ton of questions about poo frequency, poo colors, activity and behavior change, to potty accidents (we were well past this stage). Several of the questions seemed unrelated but with each answer the doctors stance changed and she looked more focused and determined. She asked if we would be able to go home to get clothes and check in the following day. The days leading up to the appointment had been hard as Grayson's condition continued to worsen, and I had thought that just maybe they would offer to run another test the following day. In which case I wanted to be prepared to stay overnight if needed so we could do it first thing in the morning. Looking back, that was clearly a heavenly whisper. We had packed an overnight bag, and when we told the doctor a look of relief swept over her. She walked us upstairs and we were immediately admitted.
The past year and a half have been a whirl wind, and I'm just now starting to see how it's affecting us all. In the summer of 2018 Grayson had been very ill for several months and we had just been given the run around and prescribed a lot of Miralax. He had become disinterested in soccer, was no longer bouncing on the trampoline, and mostly sat around reading. He had lost about 20% of his body weight, and at 7 years old weighed just over 40 lbs. and hadn't grown in a full year. I got wind that the kids had been assigned a new doctor, so I immediately called and made an appointment.
I walked in ready to plead my case, and ready to argue that we could not be sent away with yet another useless prescription for my son who was having 10 or more bowel movements a day. I walked in also on the verge of tears from watching my energetic, fun, wild boy slowly have all the love and joy drained out of him. We had tried absolutely everything that I could think of already and had been scolded by our previous doctor for taking out gluten. When he first started to lose weight (after several months of a slow decline), I thought it may be celiacs and decided we would try to figure it out on our own. But when I told the doctor she blamed me for his weight loss. I walked in with just a small hope that this would be different, that this doctor would help. During that first meeting, I sat across from a man whose 6 kids and sweet wife I knew. We had actually just recently been on a trip to a nearby castle with his family (wow, small world). He sat, and listened to the whole story, start to finish. He let me say my piece, and I finally felt peace. He looked me in the eye, and said that we would do more.
He did not roll his eyes, he did not send us away with a quick fix, or ignore my intuition. As I walked out, a slow silent tear rolled down my cheek as we walked to radiology. Grayson had a quick x-ray, that was our first step, and it was the first in a long train of events that finally led us to a nearby pediatric hospital.
That first x-ray revealed a little pea-sized something or other. Which led to an ultrasound where we found out that it was a gallstone. And finally were sent to the specialist in Trieste. We were meant to see the surgeon about gallbladder surgery, but she was out of town. So instead we met with the head of the GI department. The whole appointment was to find resolution for the gallstone, thinking that maybe that was a large contributor. The doctors had mentioned IBD, but to be honest I think I was a little in denial and hoped the gallstone would resolve a lot of the issues. We were dealing with the gallstone first anyway, or so I thought.
We all went to the appointment, and sat in a small office while the doctor asked a ton of questions about poo frequency, poo colors, activity and behavior change, to potty accidents (we were well past this stage). Several of the questions seemed unrelated but with each answer the doctors stance changed and she looked more focused and determined. She asked if we would be able to go home to get clothes and check in the following day. The days leading up to the appointment had been hard as Grayson's condition continued to worsen, and I had thought that just maybe they would offer to run another test the following day. In which case I wanted to be prepared to stay overnight if needed so we could do it first thing in the morning. Looking back, that was clearly a heavenly whisper. We had packed an overnight bag, and when we told the doctor a look of relief swept over her. She walked us upstairs and we were immediately admitted.
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