G-button Check, Check!

KayTar had her g-button check this morning. It was an easy and interesting test, the best kind! I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, since this was our first go at this and there isn't much information about there about g-button checks under fluoroscopy on Dr. Google. Here's how it went. First, KayTar gowned up and laid on the table and they took a plain old x-ray. Then, the radiologist came in and they pushed in barium via her g-button and we watched it on screen. KayTar thought it was so cool to see her spine at first and then her stomach and a bit of her intestines. We even saw her esophagus as she refluxed the barium. I found that part impressive! Her own little barium geyser. She has been diagnosed with and treated for reflux for a while, but it has definitely gotten worse lately...so it was good to get internal conformation of what we are externally observing in her. She recently went from being on Prevacid once daily, sometimes not even that was needed, to complaining often of throwing up in her mouth and tasting her per g-button meds frequently, even after upping her Prevacid to twice daily.

The other interesting tidbit was that the radiologist pushed in 3 ounces of barium in and he told me that was about all her stomach could hold and he wouldn't recommend giving her much more than that at a time in a feed. I told him what we were feeding her previously, 8 ounces over 30 minutes, and he looked a little skeptical and said that wouldn't be tolerable for her. She has never had a study like this before, so I have nothing to compare it to...but we do know she WAS tolerating that feeding regiment for a long time. For now, we're continuing the small feeds and (mostly) no meat, because it seems to be working thus far. It was sad at dinner tonight, though, because we had sausage and she wanted it SO bad. She licked the spatula like a lollipop and then did the same to a little piece of sausage. I finally caved and let her eat one little piece of it (one small round sliced pieced from a smoked chicken sausage). She was just dying for it and I'm a softy!

The next step is the gastric emptying scan to hopefully find out why she is only tolerating a small volume, probably next week if the pediatrician can get us a slot. Her MRI is next week, too. It will be our last week of summer and I think the clock might just run out on us before we get this latest puzzle figured out and put together!

KayTar took this shot of her guts during the test and told me she was going to tell 

BubTar that the black (barium) was blood to "freak him out".

 

She took this shot of me in the little x-ray machine mirror.

 She asked me to take this one of her from the point of view of the x-ray.

PS: Her basic metabolic labs are back and are perfect! Glad to hear her nutritonal status is on track so we can rule that out. Looks like we are looking at mechanical issues.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad