Oliver's ER Visit

Last Wednesday I received a call from the school that Oliver was coughing a lot and seemed out of sorts. No fever, but they wanted me to come pick him up. I brought him home and after a few hours my mom instinct kicked in and I knew something was wrong. As I watched him I was confident that he had something stuck in his esophagus. I called our pediatrician. She was on vacation, but the nurse brought us in to see another doctor. She referred us to the ER. I called out geneticist, just to make sure we really needed to go to the ER....at 6:30 pm in DC traffic. She definitely thought we needed to go and she called ahead to alert them that we were on our way.

I am so glad she called ahead. The ER at CNMC was so busy at that time of night. We were able to get checked in immediately and whisked back to a room. It took a few hours and a few x-rays, but they were confident something was stuck in there, but it didn't show up on the x-ray. The surgeon felt most comfortable admitting us and having the morning crew deal with scoping Oliver. He would have to be put under general anesthesia and the surgeon wanted a specific doctor to handle the surgery. I was so thankful that he was familiar enough with MPS to know there are additional risks to putting him under and wanting the best team to handle the procedure.

Matt was home with a sleeping Waverly. (We didn't expect this to turn into an ordeal.) A very kind friend graciously drove down to the hospital after picking up a bag for me and Oliver for our overnight stay. We settled into a room and finally fell asleep at 1:00 am.

What should have been a 30 minute procedure turned into 2 hours. I was alone and completely frightened. The surgeon was unable to get the item out and had to push it into Oliver's stomach. It was a large yellow piece of ridged plastic. They wanted to keep him another night to make sure it didn't cause any additional problems as it made its way out. Unfortunately Oliver had a very rough recovery and was unable to keep any food down. He had to undergo further tests to confirm the plastic wasn't lodged in his stomach. Finally on the third day he began to turn a corner and they discharged us late Friday night.

He has had a difficult time recovering, slowly getting both his appetite and energy back. But I am happy to report he is feeling much better.

We are fairly confident that he ingested the plastic lid to his applesauce pouch at school on Wednesday during lunch. We will have to wait to confirm our suspicions. The GI doctor said it could take up to a month!! Lucky us. We get to check every diaper for said object.