August 28, 2006
The last couple of weeks have been rough for Natalie. It began on the 17th with some vomiting and wretching spells. We knew that the stomach bug was going around, but she didn’t look good. Tricia took her to Children’s that night, and luckily, they ran some blood work and found the problem. Her pancreas enzyme Lipase was extremely elevated. The normal range was 40 to 50, Natalie’s was over 9,000!
She was really sick and was admitted to the B5 unit, which is a step down from ICU. Natalie was placed on IV fluids, which she retained quite a lot of. The doctors then were worried not only about finding the cause of the pancreatitis, but why she was holding all of the fluids. They began running tests and trying to determine why her pancreatitis had returned. She had a problem with it in June, but not to this extent.
The doctors were EXCELLENT! Doctor B. and the Blue Team were great, and showed such compassion and energy that it was amazing. The staff was great and not that we want to go back anytime soon, but if we had too, we would hope that we can have such a great experience in hard times like we did this time.
Natalie did get better with rest and some drugs to help pull the fluid out of her, and we came home on Friday the 25th. We are still taking it easy with her as she is not tolerating her pre-hospitalization schedule well. Hopefully with some more rest and easing her back into her routine she can get better.
We will keep everyone up to date as best as possible and let you all know how she does when she starts back to school, hopefully later this week or next.