our not-so-fairy tale life

Hayley has had trouble swallowing for years now. Lately it's become more annoying for her. If she eats too fast ... eats too soon .. eats too much ... eats when she hasn't eaten for awhile (breakfast), the food gets 'stuck' in her esophagus. Not only is it annoying but it's also painful. We have tried most everything from eating smaller and slower (for a teenager this is no easy task) to several different antacids. Nothing works. We finally got referred out to a pediatrician gastroenterologist. This doctor wasted no time. Got her in for an upper GI xray that next week and the following day she scheduled Hayley an endoscopy.

The xray was interesting. They had Hayley swallow all this thick milky white liquid and watched it as it went down into her stomach and took pics of it as it traveled. Stuff like this is fascinating to watch. It was 'cool' .. they even let me stay in the room. After the milky stuff they gave her a pill form of this and stood her up to do the xray. Sure enough .. that little pill got 'stuck'. It just stayed there. "Drink all of that water honey" they told her. "I already did". "hmm".

The next day was the other procedure. She had to be put to sleep. They put this tube with a camera on it to look at her esophagus and her stomach and then they take biopsy's as they go. It was really a quick procedure - about 15 minutes. Boy Hayley was soo nervous that morning. They let me go back into the room until she was 'out'. It was a bit unnerving to watch that stuff go into her vein and immediately she was gone. This is horrible but all I could think about were dogs who are put to sleep. Is that what it's like? Instant? I knew in my brain that it was all safe and that she wasn't being 'put to sleep' in the sense of putting a dog to sleep. I knew this. Still, I kept thinking to myself "um, surely she will wake up. right?".

I got to sit in the small waiting room while they did the procedure. They warned me beforehand that it might take awhile for her to wake up and they like letting kids wake on their own instead of waking them up. Something about waking teens in particular .. they wake up fighting if they don't do it on their own.

It took Hayley an hour and 1/2 afterwards before she even stirred. They then let me go back to see her. Boy she was loopy. As she was waking the nurse explained to me that on top of the sleeping meds they also injected her with some narcotic and another medication to keep her from getting sick. All these together can possibly make for temporary amnesia. I was not to leave her alone that day. She might not remember things I tell her or vice verse. Not a minute from explaining this to me ... the nurse asked Hayley if she would like something to eat .. "we have icecream, popsicles, graham crackers". Hayley sits up as if she's just ready to go and says "well, do you have any sherbet". The nurse left and comes back about 2 minutes later and tells Hayley that unfortunately there was no sherbet. Hayley looks at this nurse like she's got two heads and says "why? I didn't ask for sherbet". Oh this was just the beginning. She asked me the same question five times before we got to the car to leave. Each time the question would start off "oh yeah mom .. I forgot to ask you ..." It was hard to not laugh and to have patience with this all at the same time.

It's the only time she can ever really get away with telling me she clearly did not remember me telling her to do something.

We don't have any results from the procedure yet. The doc was going to put a balloon in her esophagus to open it up a bit but ended up she couldn't because of so much inflammation. So the saga continues. Hopefully we will have answers next week.

So this hasn't been the most pleasant journey but glad I was able to get some laughs out of it along the way!