A Tiny Bit of Progress

I can’t believe it’s been an entire month since I last blogged. Blogging just hasn’t been something I’ve been able to keep up with lately. With work, family, sick baby, more work, running kids to and fro, cooking and more cooking, I’ve haven’t been able to keep up with my laundry, much less my blog. ‘Tis the season I’m in, I suppose.

I’ve had many people ask me lately what the latest is with Libby so I figured I better give an update. The last time I posted Libby was in the middle of taking a prescription for parasites. The doctor said that if it was going to help we would most likely see results right away. We didn’t. The same symptoms lingered on.

About two weeks after she finished the treatment, I started to see a slight improvement in some of her symptoms. Her diarrhea has been virtually gone for almost 2 weeks now. However, the abdominal distention has remained. There have been a few days were I noticed it wasn’t as bad though. However, yesterday it seemed exceptionally bad. I’m not sure if these small improvements are a late improvement from the parasite medication or a result of the drastic diet modification she has been on. Personally I think they are diet related, but there really isn’t any way I can know for sure, and I’m definitely not taking her off the special diet.

Her doctor, whom I am neither happy nor unhappy with, seems to continue to think she has some sort of motility disorder. I will be shocked if this turns out the be the case. The thing that just doesn’t make sense to me about a motility disorder is that Libby seems to have two conflicting symptoms when it comes to that, diarrhea and distention. The doctor explained that in a motility disorder food stays in the tract too long which would cause excess gas and then distention. I’m not sure how food could be staying in her digestive tract too long when she has diarrhea. Constipation would make much more sense, and Libby has never had a problem with that.

In the meantime, he continues to rule things out. Last Friday Libby had a colonoscopy and endoscopy at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. The doctor took biopsies to test for lactose and sucrose malabsorptions. They also took samples of her gastric juices to test for bacteria overgrowth.

Her doctor just called me today with the results. All of those tests came back totally normal. However, he did find one “clue”, as he put it. The first clue he’s gotten so far I guess. Basically he said that the intestine has 3 layers to it with the last layer being a thin layer of muscle. Usual they don’t get that layer in the biopsies. For some reason it ended up in the biopsies he took. He told me why, but my phone was breaking up during the part. Ugh! I guess it is not normal to get all the way to that layer while collecting the biopsy. Anyway, something was slightly abnormal about the muscle with would further his theory of a motility disorder. He said whatever they saw didn’t really tell him anything except to further investigate it. The pathologist is supposed to do some additional “stains” this next week…whatever that means. I guess that will give him some more information about the muscle layer. Honestly I basically have no idea what they are looking for. I should hear back near the end of next week about the results.

They next test on the list is a fructose breath test. The doctor wants to wait until the results of the biopsy stains come back next week before he goes ahead with that.

So there you have it. This is all still a mystery. It’s a mystery as to why Libby’s diarrhea has stopped, but the distention remains, and it’s a mystery about the muscular layer of her intestine.  Please keep praying friends!