This Heart Broken

I finally relented and took Zoe back in for another swallow study.  This test has to be the biggest dichotomy I’ve ever seen, which may be why it took me a year and a half to repeat it.  This test is to determine whether a person is getting fluid into their lungs when drinking THIN liquids.  In order to test this they sit you in an x-ray room and give you a THICK liquid called Barium that tastes absolutely horrid and then watch you swallow it on an x-ray machine.

What is Barium you ask?  Well, here is a small example of what you can find if you Wikipedia the term.  “a soft silvery metallic alkaline earth metal”, “Barium nitrate and chlorate give green colors in fireworks”, “Barium carbonate is a useful rat poison and can also be used in making bricks”.  In just the right combination, it is Barium sulfate, used as “a radiocontrast agent for X-ray imaging of the digestive system”.   This is how I define it, “gross”.

The first time we did this test Zoe just wouldn’t drink it so she “passed her test”.  She has choked on almost every drink since.  This time when I took her in I got an 8am appointment, didn’t give her anything to eat or drink until the test and the girl was so thirsty she actually drank it, at least a little.  She didn’t do any of her dramatic super choking where she acts like she can’t breathe but instead aspirated into her lungs small amounts and then didn’t cough.  She’s now labeled a “silent aspirator”.  In reality she’s just polite and silently aspirates in public whereas at home she really lets loose.

I really thought she was coughing it all up; I’ve been assuring all the doctors that she coughs it all up.  Guess what?  She doesn’t cough it all up.  Last winter is beginning to make more sense.  The technician explained to me that the body has to work really hard to get that fluid out of there and not get respiratory infections from it so when a virus hits the body it’s a double stress for the lungs.

To solve this little problem all of her liquids need to be “nectar thick”.  All her liquids.  Including water.  Can you picture “nectar thick” water?  It is WRONG.  It makes me want to vomit and I am not a squeamish person.  I have seen tubes go where they should never be put (or placed them myself), gore-tex holding her rib cage together, lots and lots of blood along with various other bodily fluids and been fine.  Apparently, “nectar thick” water is where I draw the line.

Here’s the craziest part.  She likes it.  Praise Jesus she likes it!  She can’t get enough of it. She drank 40 ounces of it today.  I guess there is something enduring about a liquid that doesn’t leave you fighting for breath afterwards.

We had a first.  A really BIG first.  A hugely large GIGANTIC first.  Zoe caught a cold…….and NOTHING HAPPENED!!!  Her tonsils swelled up which made me think she already had mono symptoms and she was up most of one night but the pediatrician laughed at me and said, “it’s just a cold”.  She didn’t stop eating.  She didn’t stop drinking.  She slept.  She acted normal.  She didn’t have to see cardiology.  Ha, ha.  I’m giddy.  I didn’t even post anything because I didn’t fully believe it until her symptoms were all gone.  It’s so liberating to see a kid with a runny nose and not think, “there’s a hospital stay waiting to happen”.

In the midst of her cold she had her bi-yearly hearing exam which she passed with flying colors.  She’s supposed to have it checked until she’s three but she’s never had any indication of hearing loss so I think that one was our last.  The lovely audiologist we had this time wanted to know why nobody took her little health department card with the blood from her heel prick (the one all infants are supposed to have done at the hospital) and have it tested for CMV.  It would instantly tell them whether she caught it from me in-utero or from her donor (this question is why she has to have her hearing tested).  Hmmm.  Either the last 7 or 8 visits were a total waste or Zoe never had her heel prick at birth.  This is entirely possible as I recall a few weeks after she was born everyone realizing that no one checked her hearing at birth because she was transferred to Children’s so fast.  Oops.

I posted a couple weeks ago that Noah came down with Mono.  Interestingly enough there is some ambivlence as to whether he had mono or not.  There are two ways you can test for Mono; one is called a Monospot test which is the simplest and most used way to diagnose the illness.  It involves a small prick of blood and the results are almost immediate.  This test just looks for antibodies your body produces while sick with Mono.  However, you have to be pretty well into the illness before the test will accurately diagnose (if done too early it will come back negative even if you have the illness).  Another test that can be run is called a titer test which can tell a doctor if the infection is currently present or has been acquired in the past.  Noah’s pediatrician ran both of these tests.  His monospot test came back positive and he did have swollen lymph nodes.  A few days later his titer test came back completely negative so she called the lab back and had them re-run the Monospot test which again, came back positive.  Did he have something else that made the monospot test give a false positive?  Was his titer test a false negative?  Who knows.  We’re not drawing blood from him again and Zoe’s mono test came back negative last week so it no longer matters.  The little faker.  She spent all week sleeping in, taking naps again (3 hour naps!), completely convincing me she was coming down with Mono and then a lovely negative test.