New post, life update

It has been awhile since I posted here, I started a few posts, never finished, and eventually deleted them. I have had ideas on what to post, but I have lacked the drive to actually sit down to write them out.

Life has been interested in the Walters' house for the last year. I have not been posting about it much here, but we have been dealing with some health issues with our oldest child.

Alexzander turned eleven in April, for several years now he has been dealing with stomach issues from an unknown cause. He also has been slowly falling off the growth chart. At eleven years old he is 57lbs and 4' 11".  We have been on the roller coaster path of trying to find a cause.

Alexzander was not a small baby, he was 8lbs 5 oz, 20". He stayed on a good growing path for the first few years of his life, but as he reached about the age of five, we started noticing that every other kids his age was much bigger. We tried to not put much thought into it, we did ask at a doctor appointment, and we were reassured that he was growing still, just slowly. He would probably just be a late bloomer.

It was around this time that he also started complaining about stomach pain at different times. Years would go on, he would go from diarrhea to constipation, very random bouts of this, have some time being fine, and the cycle would start all over again. I asked about it and we never really got anywhere.

As time went on, the stomach aches got worse, and he started to get the point that he was almost off the growth chart. This was around the same time that he also started getting strep, all the time. Eventually they decided it was the best choice to remove his tonsils, they told me that it would stop the strep, and it may help him grow. He has not had strep since, but it did nothing to help his growth, or his stomach pain.

Things came to a boiling point when he was almost ten. His stomach pain was almost daily, he was not growing, and the lack of growth was starting to really bother him. I took him once again, but this time I was pushy with the doctors, I told them that something was not right, and they needed to figure out why this was happening.

We started with Celiac testing, and removal of gluten from his diet. Celiac test came back normal and removing the gluten did not help him at all. Next they moved to dairy testing, and removing all dairy from his diet. Once again, test came back normal and removing dairy did not help.

At this point the doctors here finally decided it was time to send him on, they sent him to a Ped GI, we had an initial appointment where they ran some blood tests, and tested his stool. They were looking for a range of things, including Celiac ( just to be sure ), inflammation, parasites and more. Everything came back normal. The GI was very concerned about the pain, and his growth. Before we moved on with more testing, he wanted to send him to the Endocrologist.

At our first appointment with the Endocrologist they did a growth plate test ( xray of the hand to see what age his bones say he is ). His bone age test came back at 7.5, we knew that Alexzander was small for his age but I will admit that I was not expecting it to come back that he was that small.
That same day they ran a growth hormone test. They warned me ahead of time that it is not uncommon for this first test to come back at normal, even if he has a problem. The reason for this is because of the way your body release the hormones during the day, it only peaks at certain times. Anyway, without getting into the complicated medical side of this all, his first test came back normal.

The next step is a more complicated test that will give us a full look at this hormone levels. They told us that we needed to wait six months, see if he grew an inch, and if not they would run the test. Since he was eleven already, I told them that waiting was not something we wanted to do. If we do not catch this soon, he may never reach the growth he is suppose to. The doctor told me that reason for the wait is insurance.

After several phone calls, I got the go ahead from our insurance to get this test without waiting for six months. We will be going in June 13th, should have results in about two weeks after the test. I am hoping for answers, and soon. It has been a long road already.

I do not relish the thought of Alexzander having a disorder. I do not want to give him shots every day. I do not want him to be scared anymore. I do want answers and I do want my boy to grow.

None of this gives us answers to his stomach problems. At this point, we have put the other testing on hold. We want to get one issue addressed at a time. I told the doctors that I wanted to wait before we did anything else because stressing the child out with test after test is only going to make whatever is wrong, worse. We have decided to try and treat his issues with diet changes and we are seeing a lot of results already.

I plan on writing out what changes we are making in another post. At this point, I just want to get through this next test and go from there.