Humbling

Sorry it has taken me so long to get this update done, but the last two days have been crazy busy and emotionally draining.  So here's the official story of how our trip to the pediatric gastroenterologist went yesterday:

After being up with Bethany until 11:30 pm the night before then having to get up with her at 5 am, I made the decision to skip school for Josh and sleep in.  I thought a decent night of sleep might be important before taking my baby to her appointment.  I got up at 9 and it was nice.  My mom went with me to the appointment that was an hour away at a huge hospital.  Shad is out of town this week for work, so I asked her to be my moral support.  We left 2 hours before the appointment just to be sure we were on time or even a little early.  We were going to drop off Hannah and Josh at their aunt's house on the way.  As I pulled out of the drive way my car kind of sputtered and hesitated as I pushed on the gas pedal.  I didn't think a lot about it because it has done that before, Shad said it was just in need of a new fuel filter which he promised to replace when he got home this weekend.  We got on the road and went about 5 miles when I noticed that the check engine light was on.  After almost cussing I decided that I didn't want to drive to this very important appointment with a car that may stop working.  So we turned around and went back to my house to get my mom's van.  This is where I realized that God was trying to teach me an important lesson about control.  I now officially had none.  When I am running late to an appointment I tend to get uptight and want to speed a little to be sure I make it on time.  Now Mom was driving.  And although I wanted to will her to go faster, I wasn't going to say anything.  So I took a deep breath and decided to trust that we would get there in God's timing, which is perfect, you know.

Of course we got there with just a few minutes to find a parking spot, which is not an easy thing to do.  After driving to the top of a parkade with "Permit Parking Only" signs all the way through it, we realized we pulled into the wrong one.  While trying to find the right parkade we actually ended up at the loading area for the exact building we needed to be in and there was a parking attendant there to tell my mom where she could go to park.  So she let me out with Bethany and we headed up to see the doctor.

Walking into that building was one of the most humbling things I have ever done.  This place is full of terminally and critically ill kids and heart broken parents.  I was thanking God for Bethany and her not so serious sickness as we got on the elevator.  And as I left the elevator I was thanking God that Bethany was not the little girl in the wheel chair with the tracheotomy.

After checking in we were called back within minutes.  I was expecting the doctor that I looked up on the Internet to walk in and, instead, two gals that looked younger than me came in.  They introduced them selves as a student doctor and a resident.  They asked me many questions and I answered "no" to most of them.  As the doctors both stood over Bethany to examine, she was kind enough to fill her diaper.  It was like she knew exactly what she was there for.  So like three crazy people we all cheered then expectantly removed her diaper to look closely at her stinky poop.  In it was only a tiny fleck of blood but it was very watery.  After that the two doctors excused them selves to go confer with the doctor from the Internet picture, Dr. T.

A few minutes later all three of them came in and, once again, we opened up the poopy diaper to examine it.  Dr. T noticed that it looked oily, which until she explained it, sounded kind of odd.  Then she turned around to tell me what she thought.  She explained that Bethany has a fairly severe milk protein allergy that is causing allergic colitis.  Essentially the allergic reaction to the milk protein is causing her intestines to be inflamed and irritated and that is what is causing the blood, mucous and diarrhea.  She went on to explain that the allergy is severe because it appears to be affecting her large intestine and her small intestine.  The poop was oily because she in not absorbing the fat from the formula properly.  She said if we let this go much longer Bethany would probably start to lose weight because of the poor absorption in her small intestine which is where many of the vitamins and fat are absorbed.  See what I mean about God's timing being perfect?  Now I know this sounds pretty serious, but there is really great news.  This is treatable with special hypo-allergenic formula (it is expensive and smelly) and babies out grow it by about one year.  Thank God!



By the way:  I got my car fixed today and it's OK too!  Thank you to my brother, Mike, for hauling my kids and I around town today!