Elijah's finally getting better

Elijah has had fever off and on (19 out of 30 days) for the past month. The reason I let the fever go so long without being checked is because it started when the other boys had Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease, so I figured he had a mild case of that with fever but no real ulcers in his mouth. Then his forth time of fever was when Malachi and Ezra were so sick with super high fever and a cough, so I figured that was what they had, but he never coughed. But this past Sunday night it started back again and although it has mostly been in the 101 range over the past 4 weeks, it was 102.3 on Sunday night.

So we went to the pediatrician on Monday and she ran several tests which all came back negative. So she gave us an order to go to Children's Hospital and get more tests run which we did on Tues. Wed morning at 8 am our pediatrician called me and said that the blood work indicated significant GI issues. For those that don't know, Elijah has had "bathroom" problems all his life and we have dealt with them as you would deal with constipation. As he has been dealing with fever, his problem had gotten worse and worse and finally he was crying and hurting all the time. When his fever went up, his symptoms increased.

All that to say, she said she was going to personally call a GI doctor and get us in that day. So we saw the GI doctor at 4:30 on Wed and after looking at Elijah's blood work and examining him he was certain that he had Inflammatory Bowel Disease and an infection in his bowel that was causing the fever. He worked us into his schedule to have GI tests done at the hospital on Friday morning.

At the Children's Hospital they bring in a Nintendo 64 to play while you are waiting for your procedure.

Elijah was looking forward to "being put to sleep" since he has struggled his whole life with falling asleep. He was enjoying it so much that he stayed asleep for a long time after they brought him back from recovery.

Since he was so weak they wheeled him to the car.

The tests at the hospital confirmed what the doctor knew he would find: he has Crohn's Disease. If you are interested, the website that the doctor recommends in http://www.ccfa.org/. After our appointment with the doctor on Wed afternoon, I was using the term IBS to describe what the doctor had said he thought was wrong with Elijah, but I was wrong it is NOT Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It is Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). His large intestines is in such bad shape that he needs to go a 3 to 4 months of steroids just to reduce the swelling. His large intestines are very inflamed and swollen and covered in ulcers. Thankfully, however, his upper GI track looks good. The GI doctor said we will be seeing a lot of him for the next 3 months and that we can expect it to take at least 3 month before he is feeling better.His continuous fever over the past month is due to an infection in his bowels and therefore he is on antibiotic for that.

Back at home.

We are very thankful to God because our pediatrician rushed us into this GI doctor (called him personally on her day off and told him he had to work Elijah in that day) and the GI doctor rushed us into this procedure even though his schedule was full.. We will meet with the doctor on Wed and will know more about what lies ahead of us.