Another check-up

This past month and a half since returning from Our Children's House sure has been busy!! I am really loving my new job as the Family Advocate for the Children's Advocacy Center of the South Plains here in Lubbock. We have also moved Eli to a new Preschool/PDO four days a week. He really seems to be loving it there and he is doing so well! I continue to be surprised on a daily basis by the things he is learning and picking up! He is growing up too fast!

Eli, my mom and I just returned from Fort Worth where Eli had a check up with his new GI doctor, Dr. Osuntokun, at Cook Children's Hospital. I continue to be incredibly impressed with this place! My mom and I kept saying that we wondered how Eli would be now if we had come to Cook Children's in the first place, instead of two years after all of Eli's health issues began. Dr. Osuntokun is definitely an amazing doctor. He listens, answers all your questions, and is just a great person! I was impressed when, during the appointment, Eli was a bit resistant, but it didn't "bother" Dr. O. And when Eli began making noises (kind of motor-boating his lips), Dr. O mimicked the sounds back to Eli, without ever skipping a beat! And I was also very impressed that, while at a Specialty Hospital, we were in and out within 30 minutes of Eli's appointment time! When does that EVER happen?!

The next day was Eli's procedure at Cook Children's hospital. Eli had an upper GI scope, biopsies of his esophagus, and they changed out his G-button. The pictures from the scope were the clearest I have ever seen! We are very hopeful that the biopsies will come back clear. We expect to get those results any day now. We were concerned about the granulation tissue around Eli's G-button. Dr. O was going to cauterize it, but upon closer inspection during the procedure, he was able to see that it is not granulation tissue; it is actually scar tissue. He said that if he removed it now, it would be an open wound and would take quite a while to heal and that, for the moment, it is purely cosmetic.

We were in recovery with Eli for a while longer than expected, mainly because he had a hard time waking up from the anesthesia and had thrown up after they removed the breathing tube. He had had some congestion for the past two weeks and his right lung was congested during the pre-op exam, so they also gave him a breathing treatment before we were discharged. The care they gave Eli was amazing; just one more thing that impresses me about this hospital and it's staff.

So, now we are just waiting for the biopsy results! Once we get those, we will schedule another appointment and possibly another scope. We expect this to be routine, every 2-3 months, for the next couple of years. We will see Dr. O regularly as follow-ups and to monitor Eli's GI health and G-button. GI scopes and biopsies will be scheduled and performed based on the previous scope and biopsy results. So, we'll just wait till we hear on these results and make plans from there. But we are anxious and excited to be able to introduce new foods to Eli and continue to watch him grow!