Month: July 2006

Praise the Lord, Ender and Grace just had a new baby boy. He was born 7 lbs 12 oz, a big boy for sure. Both the mom and the baby were fine.

Please keep them in your prayers.

Continued from Part 1.

So we went home at around 10pm on June 17th.

I immediately scheduled a sick-visit with Lauren’s own pediatrician, Dr. NH for Monday.

During the whole day Sunday, we can sense Lauren straining at the time of bowel movement, and her poop still smelled odd.

On Sunday night, I called Oakland Children’s Hospital trying to get some clarification on the re-introduction of milk into Lauren’s diet. Dr. T called me back and left a message saying I can just completely remove Pedialyte from her diet and give her milk only after 24 hours. He also told me that Lauren’s stool culture came back negative for any bacteria that could cause diarrhea. That was a great relief since all of us thought Lauren had some form of bacterial related gastroenteritis.

Jay called me on Sunday night, and I passed him the good news so he can share it with our church friends.

On Monday June 19th, we brought Lauren to Dr. NH’s office for a visit. Dr. NH confirmed the the original diagnosis by Dr. H, saying this could be just diarrhea, and we don’t need to give Lauren any medication, maybe we should introduce Rice Cereal to form up her stool. By now, Lauren looked much better, and is no longer as fussy. However, we can still sense a general discomfort in her, so we left with some doubts in mind.

Come Tuesday, Lauren’s again improving a bit more. However, I then got a call from a Dr. R from Oakland Children’s Hospital. He told me that they just found a very rare form of bacteria in Lauren’s stool culture. The name of the bacteria is Aeromonas, which is common in fresh water fish. I asked Dr. R why it took so long to identify the bacteria, and was told it is uncommon and takes awhile to get to critical mass.

Now Lauren has been drinking a mix of JY’s milk and formula only, does not even have any solid food. So we suspected contamination during our sterilization process inside the kitchen where we do often cook fresh water fish. The doctor called also gave Lauren an antibiotic – Cephalexin to combat this bacteria, and we were told to give it to her for seven days.

I immediately called Dr. NH, and was told to start giving it to her.

The Cephalexin comes in a pink bottle, with crimson red and cherry flavoring. However, it must be administered cold using a dropper, directly from the fridge, which Lauren didn’t enjoy that much. She learned to push out the liquid with her tongue, and was very successful at wasting a lot of it. Thankfully, we got a lot extra, and was able to get the required amount down.

On Wednesday though, Lauren started to pass large amount of stool again, and again we saw some streaks of blood in her stool. Again, I called Dr. NH again, and was told to continue her milk/formula, and the antibiotics.

We can see some improvement in her though, she’s no longer straining as much and giggled a lot more. Her poop also smelled much better, almost to the point of having no smell at all.

Now fast forward to June 29th, it’s the first day after we stopped the Cephalexin. Lauren suddenly had three stools within 45 minutes again. Although this time it didn’t smell and there is no blood in them. I called Dr. NH, and I think he’s finally fed up with me calling him almost daily. He signed a stool culture slip, and asked me to pick up and get it to a lab on Friday.

I actually took June 30th off, in the early afternoon, I got the slip from Dr. NH’s office, and brought a freshly soiled diaper to the lab. At the lab, the attendant actually gave me a pair of latex gloves and a spoon, and instructed me to scrape the poop off the diaper into a small plastic container. As you can imagine, I was not used to doing this kind of tasks, so it took awhile to scrape the poop off, and I accidentally poured some of the liquid inside the container down the toilet. I asked the attendant, and was told it’s not a problem, the liquid is only there to indicate the level.

I’m going to call on Monday to check on the result.

Please pray for us that the result come back negative for any bacteria, and that there won’t be a part 3 to this story.

Thanks.

The frequent readers of my blog may have noticed that lately my entries seem shorter than usual.

The reason behind these short entries that I and JY has been trying to recover from Lauren’s first crisis.

Let me explain.

We decided the week before June 17th that we’d like to bring Lauren to our friends Omar and Jackie’s apartment building so that we can use the swimming pool to get Lauren her first close contact with water. My mother-in-law was a competitive swimmer who competed at national level when she was young, and JY was also trained early on to become a competitive swimmer.

We were supposed to go over to Omar’s apartment at around 4:30pm so that we can start at around 5pm. However, when I called Omar, he told me he was still on the way back home, and asked me to get there at around 7pm instead. We agreed, that that means we have another hour to kill.

Just then though, Lauren started to pass lots of stool. She had three stools within an hour, and the first one almost made her diaper burst. The third stool though was the most worrisome, it had streaks of blood in it. All three stools smelt foul with a distinct acidic tinge.

Being a Saturday afternoon, Lauren’s regular doctor is off, I called their office’s weekend number, and got hold of a registered nurse. The nurse told me she’d get me a doctor on the phone ASAP. However, I didn’t want to wait much longer, so JY, my mother-in-law and I took Lauren to Oakland Children’s Hospital. We took all the soiled diapers with us so that a doctor can run some tests on them. A doctor from the same medical group got hold of me while I was on my way, and told me we should bring her to the Oakland Children’s Hospital, so I thought “good, we are already doing the right thing”.

We got to the hospital at around 6pm. It took us 30 minutes to go through the triage nurse and the registration. We waited another 40 minutes once we were called into the examination rooms. An intern, let’s call him Dr. T came in, asked a bunch of questions, and examined the soiled diapers we brought in. Lauren actually soiled her diaper again while in the hospital, and clear streaks blood could be seen mixed inside the mucus inside the stool.

Dr. T made the preliminary diagnosis of anal fissure, tried to show me the fissure site, but I couldn’t see it with my untrained eyes. We were a bit perplexed because it didn’t explain the sudden increase in the frequency of stools and the foul smell. We insisted that we get a second opinion.

We wait another 90 minutes for the supervising doctor, let’s call her Dr. H. Dr. H used her special tool to examine Lauren, and told us she couldn’t see a fissure clearly. She gathered the last soiled diaper, and sent it in for blood and stool culture tests. The doctor also told us to put Lauren on Pedialyte exclusively for 24 hours, no milk or formula.

We waited another 30 minutes, then a nurse came and told us the blood test confirmed that there is human blood in the stool, and that a stool culture is being performed on it, and we can leave.