Upper GI Study

Friday Kyle finally made it to his upper GI study at Banner Desert Cardons Children's hospital. This was our third rescheduled appointment. He's been so sick this summer we had to keep putting it off. His GI Specialist requested it to make sure he didn't have any anatomical malformations of his small intestines that is making it difficult for him to gain weight. We were expecting to be there for an hour or two. It turned into an awful 8 hour day.

He had to fast from 6am to 3pm when they finally let me nurse him even though we weren't done. He screamed and screamed while we fed him the Barium and figured out every conceivable trick to spit it back out at us. He cried all morning and into the afternoon and fell asleep for about 20 knock out, exhausted coma-like minutes. (hence the above picture, complete with leftover chalkiness on his lips from the barium) We were told that adults usually take 2-4 hours to pass the barium through their small intestines and babies usually take much shorter time since they are smaller. It took Kyle over 5 1/2 hours to get it to the point they needed it! We were there because he has digestive issues, but I had no clue his digestive tract moved quite that slowly! The good news is the radiologist doctor did not see anything "wrong" on her first look at the films, except for a bad case of reflux which we were already aware of (but it was nice to have it officially confirmed at least). We'll go into his GI specialist next week to get the official results and I'll request a lower GI study to test for Hirschsprungs Disease. Which means I will most likely have another awful day like that. Kyle bounced back nicely though and is happy to be home and is eating more then he has in weeks.