Endoscopy/Colonoscopy Again?!?!?!?

Poor Sam! Since the fall he has been complaining about his belly hurting. We had been to the GI doctor in october and had kind of had this plan that we worked out with changing his meds around and stuff. So we did all that, I had his primary do a KUB (ultrasound of his belly) to make sure there was no constipation or gas issues. Which there wasn't. I have sent several emails to his doctor over the last month regarding the pain and wondering what we should do. Since the beginning of december Sam's appetite has been affected, there are days when he takes a few bites of food and then just starts complaining and won't eat any more. He has complained when he has and when he hasn't eaten. We did a dairy free diet for a little while to see if that made a difference and it didn't. Once when Sam was over with my MIL they gave him this papaya supplement. And it seemed to help him. So I brought it with us to ask them what they thought about it. When I told them that it seemed like it helped him a little, that got the ball rolling in their mind. Apparently there is some enzyme deficiency that the papaya might help. So now they want to do another colonoscopy and endoscopy:-( I am so sad about this. I HATE him being put under general anesthesia. There are two reasons that they want to do this for: 1) when they did it in august 2010 they saw that he had what looked like "chronic gastritis" which is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach. They didn't understand why his stomach was such a mess, but they needed to calm down the inflammation, so he has been on adult dosages of prevacid since then. So they want to see if that inflammation is better. 2) Because the papaya supplement works they want to do this "enzyme challenge" test. I am not exactly sure what it entails but essentially while he is asleep they try to stimulate his body to produce some certain enzymes, and if it doesn't then they can then give him the enzymes to help him. So now we just wait and see when they get him scheduled. I so wish that we didn't have to go through this with him again. It isn't a terrible procedure and he will be completely fine but I still get anxious. When they did the colonscopy and he had the big hematoma formation and hten the hemorrhage it was terrifying. I know that that isn't typical but it is so scary to me to think of that happening again. So please pray for him, for his doctors and for a healing for this terrible belly pain that he is having. He has actually lost a little weight now too:-( He is 43lb8oz.

So now I have to find him a new Curious George. He had this itty bitty George that we had always brought to hospital appointments/admissions etc. Unfortunately I think we lost it after his surgery last year. And I haven't been able to find a replacement yet. But now I NEED to find one for him. That will be my mission in the next few days to find him a George to bring with us.