James' GI Appointment

James had his GI follow up last night after the 2 studies that he had done to determine why he is throwing up so much. Basically, the swallow study that he had where the radiologist saw "esophogeal dysmotility" was not meant to diagnose that. It was supposed to show whether James has swallowing problems (in his throat) or not. It showed that he does not. The fact that the radiologist (and my mom and I) saw the dysmotility lower down in his esophogus during that test is inconclusive in the eyes of his GI doctors, since the test was not intended to detect problems in the esophogus. Sooooo, they want to run 3 or 4 more tests on him down at Stanford to either confirm the dysmotility in the esophogus or see if there is anything else going on, like allergies or something.

Basically, I'm 99% sure that he does have dysmotility and that he does NOT have allergies. The GI doctors have no real treatment options for us right now, and they aren't indicating any treatment options given different outcome scenarios after the tests they want to run. They said that if he has dysmotility, nissen surgery is probably not the best option because, even though it keeps food from coming back up out of the stomach after the food has made it there, it could actually make it harder for James to get the food down into his stomach in the first place since the muscles in his esophogus are already weak, and the nissen surgery makes the bottom of the esophogus and top of the stomach tighter, in a way.

So, the GI tests will most likely tell us pretty much NOTHING, and I am back to square one - thinking that it's most likely the cyst that is causing nerve damage, and in turn, causing the muscles in the esophogus to not work properly... that this is basically a neurological issue... which we pretty much knew from the beginning!!

I called his neuro-surgeon today to try and press to have the cyst drained a.s.a.p... I haven't heard back from him yet.. but if he IS willing to do it, then we will have it drained, see if that makes any difference with the vomit, and if not, only then will we go ahead with the other tests the GI doctors want to do...

in the meantime, the doctors don't have any answers, and we get to deal with more vomit.... what's new?

sigh...