“In October of 2015, I thought our life was finally going to be ‘perfect.’ I married my best friend and the best example of how to be strong, kind, hardworking, respectful, and fun for my kiddos. I had plans, and God laughed. But, that’s ok. We can roll with it. Sometimes it’s more of an awkward fall forward, but we get there.
My daughter, Carson, was 10 in the spring of 2016 and had been having abdominal issues. She woke up screaming in pain one night. We found her in the bathroom curled up in the fetal position. I raced through town to the ER. Mario Andretti has nothing on a mama with her sick baby. The first thing they checked was her appendix and said it was fine. They told me she was probably constipated.
No, let’s scratch that off the list. I took her to our regular physician who reviewed her ultrasound results and said it was a missed ovarian cyst. We needed to get to a larger hospital. We were recommended to one in Lubbock, Texas, and told to go to their ER. We made the trek.
Days of images and labs and again, nothing. The cyst was gone. Weird. I question and plea to no avail. We go home. Day 4 she is screaming again and I get her to another doctor recommended to me. He says we must get that appendix out. It was the appendix after all. It was showing signs of atypical appendicitis, and she was diagnosed with ‘chronic appendicitis.’ I will never forget the doctor and surgeon telling me that her medical problems weren’t over. Her appendix looked like that of a 65-year-old person. They predicted what was to come.
She held her own for about 5 months then the pain came back with a vengeance. Back to the doctor, where we discover she has Peptic Ulcer disease. My sweet daughter starts on meds, suffers from more pain, so we increase the meds. That’s not it. She begins to run daily fevers and I get her to the ER, where her labs look ok.
One final trip to the ER a few days later, on October 3, 2016, and they run a rare blood test for a child. They check her lipase to check pancreatic function. Her levels were 2500 and they should be 80-160. Pancreatitis is very rare in children. Treatment is typically a complete GI rest and pain management. Her levels continued to rise and her health declined.
