Prayers for ZuZu, Part 2

We had an appointment with a new pediatric office today, to get a second opinion on ZuZu's condition. Here's the email I sent out to let people know how things went:

I'm not really sure where to start-- we left the house before 7 this morning and got home after 4-- we were at the hospital complex in Burlington for almost 3 hours while three different people checked ZuZu out.

Their consensus: "Something is definitely going on."

Helpful, eh?

Actually, they were wonderful. One was a Nurse Practitioner who is also a lactation consultant. She was amazing. But she determined everything I have eliminated from my diet should have had an effect on ZuZu by now. They looked at some of her stool right there in the office and found some kind of weird cell activity going on (there was a name for it, but I was hit with so much I don't remember some things). So even the lactation consultant (i.e., breastfeeding advocate) said that we need to get her on special formula for a week that will help her to heal. (And thankfully, they gave me about 100 dollars worth of formula, because it is EXPENSIVE).

The bottom line is that we have no answers yet, but we have a team there that is really trying to find some answers. We had to stay around town for 4 hours waiting for ZuZu to have another stool-- and with Moses in tow, that was NOT FUN. This was a day I never want to repeat.

They are running a number of tests, including tests for a number of bacterial diseases (shigella, salmonella, ecoli, and campylobacter). As you can imagine, the line of questioning was rather different-- do we have iguanas, where do we get our water supply, etc.

We should have results in a few days. We go back on the 11th for follow up. If she is not noticably better, they will send her on to a pediatric GI specialist.

Thanks for your prayers-- we have really needed them.

***

Once everything is over, I will need to blog about our experience collecting her stool sample in our car in Walmart's parking lot. Let's just say I think we will be finding "samples" of it in our car for months to come. It was on the console, on the windshield, all over ZuZu... Have you ever tried to "collect" watery stool off of saran wrap? It is nearly impossible....