She did great!!!

After a night of no sleep we checked in at the Duke Children's Hospital in Durham at 6:30 am for Makenzie's Endoscopy. We then sat in the waiting room for over an hour...why do they do this...we have a starving baby and frazzled nerves?! They finally called our names and we went back into pre-op where we went over a bazillion questions, met with the Dr doing the surgery, the anesthesiologist, and several nurses. For the most part it was just the basic stuff they have to go over with you, but I did have quite a few questions for the Dr. The main one being if they found something that needed to be surgically repaired today would she go ahead and fix it? Dr B said that she honestly did not feel that she was going to find anything structurally wrong & her main concern was getting the biopsies, but IF she did find something there was a list of things she would repair today and things she would not dependent upon what it was. After going over everything about the surgery and our questions it was time to take Makenzie back to the operating room.





The anesthesiologist asked if we wanted to carry her back and of course we said yes. Once we got in the OR things moved at warp speed. Makenzie had her bunny lovie she sleeps with and the anesthesiologist grabbed it and put a mask on it to show her thats what she was going to do to her. In true Makenzie form she grabbed the mask and started to put it over her mouth and chew on it. All of a sudden the nurse and anesthesiologist moved Makenzie and put the real gas mask over her mouth...to be honest I thought that she was just showing her what she was going to do, but within seconds I knew this was the real stuff. It was TOUGH to watch to say the least. It went really quick though and we kissed her and were escorted out (crying of course).



Then it was time to wait. Surprisingly it went quicker then we expected and we were escorted into the consultation room to talk with the Dr. I was NERVOUS...it almost seemed too quick! Dr B came in the room and we heard the words we had been waiting for "she did great"! Wooohooo!!! She proceeded to show us pictures and go over the report with us. Structurally things looked normal just as she suspected. They took biopsies of the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum and now we wait on these results for a week. We were relieved nothing further had to be done today and that things looked good, but had a million questions. Here are a few I can remember:

• What are you looking for with the biopsies? The main things are for Eosinaphil's and Celiac
• What if you find these? There are ways to manage this and we will
• What if the biopsies come back normal? Dr B has a plan of attack which part of is specific medications (that we have not tried and only specialists prescribe to babies) and if those don't do the trick...possible surgery (to stretch something out if I remember correctly) but that would be down the road after exhausting all other options.
• Are we overreacting could she just be a kid that throws up A LOT and is tiny? No absolutely not. She was thriving and all of a sudden she is not and we have to figure out why.

We talked to the Dr for a while and now that I sit down to type this is pretty much all that I can remember, but I'm impressed I remember anything at this point. It's been a long few weeks and I am exhausted! What I do know and remember is that things went great and we have a Dr who cares and is concerned and has a plan of action which was music to our ears. I literally cried tears of joy thanking Dr B. After our pediatrician told me about their waiting list and how quick they are to let patients go if there is nothing they can do I was so worried if they did not find anything today we would be released. Thankfully we are now at the right place and I truly believe we will figure out how to get our sweet girl back on track and growing! Dr B even told us about a former patient with somewhat similar circumstances...I won't go into all the details, but I will tell you that they figured out how to handle things and got the baby growing. I am confident she will do the same for our little one!



After meeting with the Dr we were taken back to the post-op area. Before we even got close to the doors I could hear our sweet girl screaming! She rarely cries, but when she does it is sad. She was pissed! We rushed to her bedside and Carl held her while I fixed a bottle. I then rocked & fed her and she sucked it down quickly! She then went back to crying immediately. Because her vitals were so good they cleared her pretty quickly for discharge...hallelujah! When the nurse tried to take out her IV she puked everywhere in very typical fashion...as her aunt said she has to leave her mark everywhere and boy is she good at that! I was worried they would keep her because the pre op nurse told me she had to keep down liquids before being released, but hello that is why we are there! They still let us go thankfully! The second they said we could go we bolted out of there to get our girl home and snuggle!!!

She has done pretty well for the most part this afternoon other than the normal side affects. Now we wait to hear on the biopsy results and dependent upon those we will go from there. I can't thank you all enough for your prayers and support! They were felt for sure! As hard as this was to put our girl through this we know we did the absolute right thing for our girl and felt so at peace about it especially after speaking with Dr B afterwards.

**Please excuse the very hot baby hairs/fly aways in the above picture! I was just thankful to be holding my baby girl!!!