Back in August (of this year) we discovered that Keira had missed nearly 7 months of CF checkups.  Whether this was because the CF Center never contacted her mom (as Paige claims) or Paige never took her, we’ll probably never know.  But when we did take her last month, she showed almost no weight nor height gain.  On the positive side she was otherwise healthy during those 7 months and her lung sounds are still clear.

This photo was taken back in July at a family reunion (Mother’s side of the family) in Clayton, NY.  Although Keira had fun by day, taking a boat tour of the Thousand Islands, playing in the local parks, and swimming her nights were fraught with severe abdominal pain.

Keira taking in some rays and watching the boats on the St Lawerence river go by.

Just before we left for the family reunion Keira went in for her monthy CF checkup.  While her lungs looked and sounded great, they discovered a small dot in her belly on the X-ray.  After some questioning, Keira sheepishly admitted she had swallowed a nickle at pre-school the previous day.  Swallowing a nickle isn’t too big of a deal as long as it doesn’t cause a blockage.  So, the doctors sent her on her way with the admonishment that if she should stop pooping to come back in. Well, everything was coming out just fine (even though the nickle wasn’t specifically seen) so it was believed the nickle had passed and we left for our family vacation.

Shortly into the vacation Keira’s appetite dropped off significantly.  Then she started complaining that she couldn’t sleep because her “belly hurt”.  Perhaps the nickle was still hiding in there causing issues?  Was she playing it up to stay up late (something she had done in the past)?  Intestinal problems aren’t uncommon in CF’ers; was there some new CF issue?   There were plenty possibilities.

By the time the family reunion portion of the vacation drew to a close (3 days over all), it was decided that Paige, Keira and Joe would head straight back home to the doctor while the rest of us would continue with our plans.

One week later additional abdominal x-rays no longer showed the nickle, but the doctors couldn’t come up with any definitive reason for her problem and couldn’t offer any relief for her pain.  Finally, with a few of the potential causes eliminated (the nickle, gas, blocked colon, etc) and some really consistent symptoms such as pain primarily at night, when laying down, or after drinking fruit juice, it started to sound an awful lot like my acid reflux symptoms.  With those things in mind I did a general search for info about abdominal pain in children.  After weeding out questionable sites I finally found a helpful chart and discussion on the Mayo Clinic’s website which seemed to point to a peptic ulcer.  However they are not particularly common in most children.  But Keira is not like most children, she needs to take replacement enzymes to be able to digest food.  Working on a hunch I went to the official website for her enzyme.  Turns out that ulcers are indeed a potential problem especially if the amount of enzyme is consistently too much for the amount of food eaten.  Over use of enzyme isn’t too big a problem for adults and teens, since they can easily estimate how hungry they are and match their enzyme use accordingly.  With young children it can be a real guessing game for caretakers.

Now, armed with this information we scheduled another doctor’s appointment and asked what they thought.  Turns out they were quite receptive to the information and started her on a regimen of anti-acids, modified diet, and enzyme levels.  The good news was her pain started to diminish in a couple of days.  But, peptic ulcers take a long time to heal and so she was on her modified diet for 1-1/2 months.  While we’re all very grateful to have this problem resolved, the down side to all of this is that Keira had to suffer through nearly 3 weeks excruciating stomach pain every night.

One of Keira’s birthday presents was a set of Barbie roller blades/skates.  With out a doubt she had a blast!