Posts Tagged ‘crohn’s disease’

We were going to get answers. This means we are going to have a lot of tests done. I just can’t even describe to you what it is like when they start listing off all of the things they are going to test for. A scary situation becomes even worse. Shannon was so dehydrated that they had a very hard time finding a vein to work with. I wanted to cry because Shannon was crying. Truthfully I lost count of how many times they stuck her. They even used the numbing cream, which Shannon said did not really work. After all of the blood tests, then we progressed to x-rays and CT scans. We spent the entire day at the Dr.’s office and at the hospital. A few days later we heard that her sed. rate was way above normal which is an indication that there was a lot of inflammation in her body. Her pediatrician was forwarding all of the information to specialists at this point. Finally we received a phone call from a pediatric gastroenterologist, and we set up an appointment. From there we only had one more test to do. She would have to have an esophagogastroduodenoscopy and a colonoscopy. Really the worst part of these tests is the preparation. This would confirm the diagnosis of Crohn’s disease. He said if you looked in the textbook under Crohn’s then you would see Shannon. She had ulcerations in her entire digestive tract that were worse in the terminal ileum, which they could see on her CT scan.

Recovering…

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My daughter Shannon was healthy and happy in 2007, in 2008 that slowly changed. It has really just been too emotional for me to blog about. But it is time.

Here is Shannon in 2007.

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Here is a picture of Shannon in October of 2008 after losing about 20 lbs.

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I am sure you are wondering how we let her get this thin without knowing something was wrong. She started losing weight and missing school in the Spring of 2008. We were attributing it to lactose intolerance. Buy the time summer rolled around and Shannon was sleeping more and more. Normal teenage behavior right? We thought maybe she had mono. After numerous trips to the doctors’ office we were assured that it was just a virus, etc. We made the mistake of not seeing the same doctor every time. When school started in the fall, she had strep throat over and over. She was missing so much  school it was beginning to be ridiculous. More Dr. appointments, strep tests, mono tests, high fevers, stomach aches and assurances that every thing was fine. She was just getting used to being in contact with new viruses and catching everything. We had planned a trip to Disney World so we went to the Dr. one last time to make sure everything was OK before our trip. We did not want her to damage her spleen since we still thought it was mono.

On our trip we noticed that she was getting worse. She could barely eat at all without stomach pain. We spent out vacation at Disney like we did when the kids were little; we spent the afternoon back at the campground taking naps. Really, what 13-year old had rather nap than swim, or ride roller coasters? We even made her go to the pool with us just to see if she would swim. She was so exhausted she fell asleep in the chair by the pool.

When we returned home from our trip. Her stomach pain was a daily part of life. We started monitoring her fevers more frequently and once it hit 104 degrees, I was sure there was something else going on. I made a Dr.’s appointment with our pediatrician, making sure to get her actual Dr. and not just another Dr. in the practice. We were going to get answers.