Curious Cohen goes on a hunger strike

It was a big day at the George house as Cohen’s GI test was this morning.  First and foremost this involved starving him.  They wanted us to do it for four hours but we chose the 2 hour option, and then fretted over the fact that he may not be hungry enough.  He had to be hungry so he would consume a mixture or 10% milk/80% barium ick so they could watch his digestive system.

Here’s how the test goes.  They undress your child and lay him on an x-ray table.  One of the parents can stay in the room (me since I have already reached my radiation frequent flyer club card) with two technicians.  The first technician, whom we will call Mrs. Old Lady is responsible for feeding the baby barium, and contorting him into different positions.  The other technician moves this live-action x-ray device around while barking out orders like “roll him on his right side,” “roll him on his back,”, “left side”, “shake it all around.”  Since I didn’t have much to do except look freaked out, I got to watch the live feed of the stuff going through his system.  The whole thing took about 10 minutes and Cohen did great – he ate the awful tasting goop well enough for them to get a good idea of what was going on.  And he was extremely happy to see his mom and get back to his regularly scheduled eating from his regularly scheduled source.

No drama today, the test came back negative. His chest x-ray came back negative from yesterday. We don’t know what the mucus study showed but hopefully that means negative.   All in all it was a good day, although in some ways you now wonder if you’re going to be tracking another ghost.  They will let him ride out the week and see how his vomiting is.  His breathing and antibiotic treatments will end in a day or two as well.   If his stomach issues persist, then we start to treat it as “reflux.”  We’re hoping that treatment for that will involve Zantac and modifications in positioning only. 

We had a ton of offers for place to stay, and help with Garrison, if we had needed to go to the surgical route.  Thanks to all of you.  I hope to return the blog to its rightful status of unfunny, sarcastic commentary very soon.  I hope that we are done getting surprises like this.  We love you all.  Except for the Irish.