Jennifer's Doctors Appointment

Well we found out a lot of possibilities but nothing concrete as of yet. What I did find out is that Jennifer's stomach pains are legitimate, as far as Dr. Osborne is concerned. He is confident that they are. We went through allergy testing today--which found nothing, she was not allergic to anything they could find. He did some lung testing and discovered that she has Asthma. The boys both have this diagnosis but Jenny never has. He says that if we treat the Asthma regularly for 10 months out of the year that we most likely will not have any more problems with Bronchitis or pneumonia. In the process of this test, the numbers showed him some possible lung damage, which he thinks may be related to acid from her stomach burning. So his first attempt at the problem will be to treat the Asthma and to also treat for Acid Reflux. He is really not confident that this is the problem, but as he put it--it is the lesser of two evils, so let's try it first. We will try that for two weeks and then will move on to screening for Celiac Disease. Celiac would without question be a much more challenging and serious diagnosis. Celiac is an auto immune disease like diabetes, for those of you that don't know. In a very uneducated nutshell, basically it involves a gluten free diet--and when untreated can lead to significant intestine damage and many things that come along with that. He also threw out one more possibility (which I am sure that there are many--these three just being the ones he has started with--seem to be the most likely with our family history) and that is abdominal migraines. I had never heard of such a thing. But I guess they have discovered that in children migraines can actually be abdominal and eventually turn into typical migraines. He said that usually treating with Motrin or Alieve will take care of the pain altogether. At this point though we don't want to try all the treatments at once--as then we wouldn't know which one was working. So we will start off with Acid Reflux and hope it is a winner. He said we should be able to tell a noticeable difference in 2-3 days and know for sure if it is gone within 2-3 weeks. If so we will go back in a year and check in. Otherwise we will check back in next month and schedule more testing. :(

I do feel positive that we are at least on a path and that her pain is legitimate and not emotional. It is so hard to know when you have an extremely emotional and reactive child, like Jennifer. We have tried to be super supportive to her--and I don't feel guilty--I just hope we can find a solution and fix it soon.

Bren and Ryan both had great days. Paul and I looked at buying a new TV tonight--but in the end put it off a little bit longer. We are kind of tired of having to bang our TV with a rubber mallet to get it to work--but then again it does still work if you bang it enough ;) I am sure a new TV is coming soon! I felt better today. The first day in a couple of weeks without a headache! YEAH!!!! Maybe I got through that one finally, just in time for my hormones to kick in :( Oh well! I am blessed and doing fine.

We are back on for our weekly BBQ again tomorrow night and look forward to starting our new tradition of serving chicken and Baked potatoes as well as hamburgers. We are hoping for a great turn out! :)