Stim Test

Yesterday was the Kiddo's 4 hour, in hospital Growth Hormone Stim test. Things went pretty smoothly if you accept the fact that, medically speaking, the Kiddo always has to do things the hard way.

We left the house in a snow storm and drove the 40 minutes to arrive at the hospital right one time. Since we were going through the Rapid Treatment Unit we got to skip regular registration and go back and do it there (which was much quicker). Then we went back to our room (nice that we got a private room for this) and the Kiddo got hooked up. An IV in the left arm, cuff and o2 monitor on the right.
As we've come to expect the needle didn't phase him at all, and he did extremely well with the IV insertion. And then we settled to wait an hour or so for them to come in with his first medication. It was taking the pharmacy awhile to get it apparently... Finally at 10'ish they gave it to him and let him wash it down with a little drink. We spent the next hour and a half watching the Disney Channel while they did blood draws every thirty minutes. The Kiddo was pretty happy, it's been several years since he's been able to watch Mickey Mouse Club House.

At around 11:30 they did the last blood draw of the first section of the testing and hooked him up to an IV to give him the medication for the second set of testing. Different meds, same process (blood draw every 30 minutes). At about 12:30 his eyes finally closed and he fell asleep.









He always looks so angelic when he sleeps. I was watching him and notices after about 15 minutes that he was getting very sweaty. His face was flushed and his hair was soaking wet. As soon as the nurse came back in I asked him if that was normal. He said the meds were sort of like Benedryl and tended to put kids to sleep quickly, but he double checked the Kiddo's blood pressure and blood sugar levels anyway. He also said that the Kiddo could eat in 30 minutes and handed us a menu to order from for him. It turns out it's a good thing he did the double checking on the blood sugar levels because it was down to 31! Normally in kids his age it should be around 110 so that's extremely low. The doctor came in and checked him, we made him wake up and gave him apple juice, and some punch slushy to try to boost the levels. At 1 his food came and we got him to eat as much as he could before he got tired again and sat back trying not to fall asleep. We asked him how old he was and what our names were to see how clearly he was thinking, and he seemed to be struggling to remember before answering.












At around 2 his blood pressure had dropped all the way down to 60/20 (average normal for a kid his age is 100/80) and when we asked him again about his name, age, our names etc and he still had to think before answering. Extreme fatigue, brain fog, and confusion are some of the symptoms of the onset of Adrenal Crisis. That's a bad thing, a very bad thing, but I always carry extra medication on me for things like that and, with the docs prompting we went ahead and gave it to him. That plus the food, and two full IV bags of saline, and half an IV bag of sugar saline and he started to rebound. The Doctor told us that she's done many of these exact same tests and that blood pressure dropping is "normal" with some kids, but that the Kiddo is the first one she's ever had a blood sugar issue with. Go figure, he really does always have to do things differently.

At 2:30 a tech came in and took his blood sugar levels for a second time (to make sure the food and iv fluids had rebounded him properly) and they were up to 117'ish. On top of that his blood pressure was going back up (it was at 98/46). That was great news and we were told at 3 to wake him and get him on his feet to walk around and try to walk the sleepiness off.












By the time 4 o'clock hit the Kiddo was doing fine. His blood pressure was up to 114/67 and he was chattering about his robot friend (the iv pole) and thinking of ways it could come home with us. We stopped at Sonic on the way home and bought him a juice slushy as a treat and kept him awake playing Lego Star Wars until 9 when we were comfortable enough with his health that we let him go to bed.

For us it was a long somewhat rough day. For him it was an adventure!! He loved every minute of it, and when we asked him if there wasn't any part of the day he didn't like he couldn't think of one. Kids are so resilient.

I spent most of the down time reading my Nook (wonderful WONDERFUL thing).