Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Failure to Thrive

This is not something that anyone wants to hear about their child. I have 3 pieces of paper with these words written on them. All of them are orders from the local Pediatric GI Specialist that I'm to take to the local hospital to have tests run on my sweet son. He's going on 17 months now and is still hovering around 19 or 20 pounds. No one seems to know why. They will be testing him for Cystic Fibrosis (all of the nurses that I've talked to says that he shouldn't have it because usually there's so much fluid on the lungs that you can hear a cystic fibrosis patient breathing down a hallway...Drew's not a heavy breather), Celiac disease which an autoimmune disease that affects the intestinal lining due to eating gluten and the last thing that he will be tested for is hydrocephalus which means that he may have water or fluid on the brain. I don't think that he has this last one because everything that I've read about the signs and symptoms do not apply to Drew. Signs and symptoms include: irritability, seizures, separated sutures, sleepiness and vomiting. Drew is a very happy-go-lucky kid and has never suffered from a seizure. Separated sutures...I guess that means where the skull fuses together in spots...Drew seems to have a pretty solid skull. He's hit it enough that I'm pretty sure he's as hard headed as both his mom and dad. Sleepiness...he's very energetic and sleeps 8-10 hours a night and takes one 2-3 hour nap during the day. Vomiting...the only time he vomited recently was when he ran a temp of 105. Other than that, he doesn't vomit. I feel pretty good about the tests coming up negative but at the same time I don't want to get my hopes up. The rug upon which I stand tends to be yanked out from underneath when my hopes get too lofty.
What really gets me about this is that I feel like I've done something wrong here. I've been told time and time again that there's nothing I can do or could have done. But there's always that nagging feeling in my gut that I just haven't done enough or that I should have done something different. This is so MADDENING! I've cried, I've lost sleep, I've cried some more. I've put it in God's hands, I've taken it back only to find that the weight of it all is too much for me. I give it back to God because he alone has the answers that I seek.
It is time for me to "be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10

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