The Vallecillo’s

After Mandi’s last visit to the ER we decided the smart thing to do would be to schedule an appointment with a gastroenterologist. Mandi is no stranger to stomach problems, so in my opinion this should have happened a long time ago.

The doctor saw Mandi on April 23rd and immediately ordered a battery of tests in hopes to find some indication as to what might be going on. One of those tests was an upper GI test, which she had done on the 24th. I don’ t know much at all about what all is involved for this test, but I do know it involves drinking some “nasty stuff” (medical term) and taking some “pictures” of it making its way down to the stomach and into the bowels. There, I just explained an upper GI test in one sentence. Can someone please submit that to Wikipedia for me?

For me one of the most interesting things was how much Mandi dreaded this test. We are talking about a person who wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over surgery, but gets all wigged-out about having to drink “nasty stuff”. Yes, that girl is very particular about what she puts in her mouth. You know, that explains… nah, that’s way too easy.

And there we were, all excited about the possibility of finally finding out something after all these years. We get the results the very next day and find out the upper GI came back negative. What? Excuse me? What do you mean “negative”? Inconceivable!

We are still in the dark about what might be going on. I’m sure more tests will be ordered after Mandi’s next appointment with the gastroenterologist, I just hope at least one of them comes back positive! Wait, that didn’t come out right…I mean, I hope one of them reveals the root of these problems. Yeah, that sounded much better.

Yes, again!

Mandi was in sad shape after she had been “praying to the porcelain god” since about 3 AM on April 12. All through the morning she kept insisting she would be OK every time I mentioned the ER, but at about 10 AM she finally broke down and wanted to go. She wanted to go so bad she was demanding an ambulance, but I had already packed Landri a bag and had her and Larsen ready to go, so I just shoved everyone into the car and headed to the ER.

This being the 2nd time she ends up in the ER for the same thing (the first time was back in December, 2007) I knew this time we need to take a more aggressive approach in trying to find out what the root cause of this might be. I was certain they weren’t going to find anything terribly telling in the ER (they never do), so I knew we would need to follow up with a specialist that could.

We finally left the ER at about 7 PM that evening, and as expected left knowing nothing about what might have caused this. For that we are going to be making an appointment with a gastroenterologist in hopes he’ll be able to figure out this mystery for us.