I have never been to Phoenix Children's Hospital, but that all changed this week. Summer and I have been there enough to make up for that and some. Before you think something terrible has occured.....Summer is fine. She is going to school, tennis lessons, and bike rides with friends. She just has been having constant stomach aches for the past 6 weeks. She saw a specialist, took some blood tests and then some more tests on her liver and gall bladder. The above picture was the gall bladder test. The gall bladder test took 3 hours of just lying still under a big x-ray machine. Summer was very patient through it all. Tomorrow we go back for an endoscopy. We are hoping to solve this riddle soon. Our doctor suspects celiac's disease. If she does happen to have that we won't call it that, we'll just say she has to live "gluten-free." I just hate the word disease.
She will no longer be able to eat wheat, rye, barley, or malt. There is still so much that is fine to eat and we will focus on the things she still can have. Like anything new, there will be a bit of a learning curve, but I have already gotten some great advice and suggestions from some friends...thank you. But, for now, we are thinking positive and hoping that the biopsy comes back in our favor.
With all of these long tests, blood taken, IV administered---the worst part of the whole process has been our meeting with the Pediatric GI Specialist. After her long drawn-out explanation on how our GI tracts have evolved from a primitive ape-like system to the one we have today......she lost us. After she left us alone, Summer and I started cracking up.
