Torturing Asher

In an effort to find out what's causing Asher's gastro-intestinal distress, he has had to endure a battery of torturous medical tests over the past few days.

Asher first visited the pediatric allergist, who heard Asher's story and said it sounds like eosinophilic esophagitis. The symptoms do quite resemble Asher's symptoms. If it is this condition, it explains why Asher's vomitting isn't like reflux vomitting and why he's not improving on reflux meds. To cure him, all we'll need to do is keep him away from the foods causing the allergy.

Two vials of blood were taken from our little dude to see if we can determine what is causing the allergy (if it is, indeed, this condition). We need to go back and get his skin tested, but that's another day.

The next day was shear torture: the upper gi series. This is the test where you drink some nasty-tasting barium and lay on a table and get x-rays taken of your belly while the barium is going through the digestive tract. It's quite neat if you're into that kind of stuff, but for a 17-month old who doesn't understand what's going on, it's really really scary. They strapped him down onto a board, strapped his arms over his head, put him under this big, noisy machine, and force-fed him some nasty goop.

The good news is that he's anatomically correct -- all the parts are there and in the right position. Even better news: no sign of reflux -- even with a belly full of barium, them pushing on his belly trying to provoke the reflux, and him screaming and crying in fear. If there ever was a time when a child would reflux, it would have been then. Which gives even more credibility to the eosinophilic esophagitis theory.

So we'll continue down this path and see where it takes us. Hopefully it'll take us to a healthy happy Asher -- one who doesn't vomit so regularly and who eats age appropriately.

We'll post his progress.