Horseplay...

A Riding Fool!

Mason has been doing a lot of riding lately. I hope he doesn't ask for a real pony!

A surprise for Mason from Grandma/Grandpa Umnus

A surprise from Grandma Pam too!

This is his excited face.

He even found a horse to ride at Braeden's 2nd b-day party!

Now he even has his parent's pulling him along on bike rides!

Who says he's not spoiled? :)

Check below for another post from today!

GI doc appointment

The saga continues with the little guy and his symptoms. Last Wed I spoke with the CF clinic and they had good and not so good news. The R.A.S.T. test (for food allergies) came back and it showed no Milk allergy! That was the good news. He did come back with one food allergy however...egg whites. Not the egg yolk, but the egg whites. How do you have an allergy to egg whites when you probably have never had them?!?! Because he was still throwing up, lost a pound according to our scale, and coughing a lot even with the hypoallergenic formula they wanted us to see the GI doc soon. They squeezed us in the the next day (Thursday 6.16)...they labeled this an "urgent appointment." We were also instructed to get him in to see his pediatrician ASAP. So i go an appointment the same day. We were also instructed to start him on another new formula and follow Reflux precautions.

Mama showing Mason his digestive tract.

Derek was going to work a half day and meet us at the appointment. I of course was running late while Derek made it ahead of time. Mason and I arrived just as they were calling our name! Thank goodness because I really did not want to miss this appointment. The appointment ended up taking 2 1/2 hours.

Hope he isn't afraid of heights...we were 7 floors up!

What it boils down to is that the GI doc doesn't even really know what is going on. He was great in explaining things and options. He said we have 2 options: 1. is to sedate him and scope him to take a look down there. and 2. wait and see for two weeks and give the new formula some time to work. Although, walking in the door I was all about scoping him and finding out what is going on for the past 3 weeks, he changed my mind pretty quickly. He stated "I don't like to sedate CF kids because their lungs take a hit." ugh...CF gets in the way again! So, we are going to wait and if things do not change when we see him again in 2 weeks he will to the scope.

"daddy I think my belly is bigger than yours."

He did instruct us to stop the Prilosec (for refulx) because the new formula needs the acid in the stomach to work. Well, we haven't seen a real big change yet...We continue to clean up vomit but hope it lessens soon. Although he is not getting a full bottle of Enfamil A.R. because he stiff arms us, so we are mixing the old formula with it to get him used to the taste.

My sweet boy all tuckered out from all these appointments.

See below for another post from today!

Daddy to the rescue!

It was bound to happen at least once in his childhood...

What do you do when you see this...

And realize this is unreachable...

you call this guy!

That's right folks...I locked my kid in the car! Luckily, Derek was only 10 min behind me and it was a cool 65 degrees out. Mason was fine. We played games through the window until Daddy came to the rescue. I know have taken my spare key off the key chain (yes I had two car keys on the same chain) and put it inside the house. Lesson learned. :)

We have a walker...well sorta!

So tonight we decided to see if Mason would try to walk towards something while holding on...and he did it! Good job sweet boy! I, of course, love the fact he threw the remote away to get to the iPhone...that's my boy! So this begs the question...how young is too young for a cell? :)

An unexpected all day trip to Children's

It was both cute to see him in a little gown, but sad at the same time.

A little back story: Mason has been throwing up a lot more lately...much like he did when he was younger...almost entire bottles. He also has been coughing...a wet cough. On top of that at night he will start to dry heave and gasp for air. There have been conversations back and forth to the CF clinic. There were thoughts that this might be a CF cough, meaning there is build up of the mucus. That was hard to hear. There were thoughts that his GERD is more severe. The last call we he had was that he might have an intestinal blockage/obstruction somewhere. Depending on the size we would either have to give him Mira-lax or go into surgery. That was hard to hear too. I was mentally punching CF in the face. This call was at 3:30pm on Tuesday and we were told all arrangements had been made for us to arrive at Children's Hospital on Wed. morning at 8:30am.

he's got some junk in his trunk :)

Here is what it boils down to. I left a panic message on the CF clinics coordinator voice mail at 6am because Mason was dry heaving, gasping for breathe at times, and just not sounding right. He had his eyes closed for the whole 45 min. I assume he was sleeping. She met us at radiology to assure us it was good timing we came in. We spent from 8:30am to 2pm in radiology getting x-rays every 30 min. He did not sleep much. He had to drink TWO barium bottles because one just wasn't doing the trick. They flavor it orange for children as a side note. It also makes their farts smell like orange too! :) We had TWO CF clinic visits, ONE quick trip to the GI clinic, and ONE trip to the outpatient lab for THREE vials of blood drawn. We left and arrived home at 5pm. We were exhausted.

This was the first x-ray room...we were in 4 different rooms and had what seemed like every radiology tech in the place.

my hesitation smile while Mason shows the true feeling in the room...we got used to the lead vests.

Round one of Barium

not everyone can pull off the hospital gown look :)

The results: he has grown 3/4 of an inch since May 16th but he has lost 2 ounces...but, NO obstruction! Thank the good Lord for that. However, his small intestines look " chronically irritated." So that is a sign of a probable milk PROTEIN allergy. We have to wait about 1-2 weeks to find out if this the case. The blood was drawn to complete a RAST test to verify it is a milk allergy and we have to send in two stool samples back to Children's so they can look for blood in the stool. All three components will give us the answer. If it is not a milk allergy, we head to the GI doctor. The funny part of it is the x-ray is usually the last thing they do when diagnosing an allergy.

in our secluded little area since there was a lot of coughing and someone with pneumonia in the waiting room.

He needed something to wash down the barium...

He makes it hard to stay worried all the time

Now, the Milk Protein allergy is a a double edge sword. I have mixed emotions about it. On one side it will be nice to know what the issue has been and we can deal with it and move on. On the other side, it adds a little more stress in the CF mix. Dairy has a lot of FAT and SALT, two of the three things Mason needs A LOT of. You would be amazed at all milk and milk products are in. The nice thing is...they say he would grow out of it by age 4. I told the dietitian that I would need to start learning to cook quick!

A doctor walked past us while both our eyes were closed and stated "they look like they are having a long day." SO TRUE!

So we will keep you updated in the final results. I am so happy that he will not remember this day. It was a traumatic one with lots of tears and not just from him. Besides the tears, Mason was such a brave and happy little boy all day. He is going to teach me a lot about inner strength on this journey. We will head back to the CF clinic on June 27th, ahead of our July 18th appointment so that we can talk to the Doctor about everything and hopefully he will have put back on the 2 ounces and more!