Dionisio's results

Well, I should have known that it was going to be a long bad day when Tracey called me last night at 10:30 to say that Dionisio had pulled out his ngt and then it took me a whole hour to put it back in, tape it, check placement, and calm him down (yeah it should have taken like 5 min…..you haven’t met this boy).  Then when I got to the baby house this am I was told that he pulled it out AGAIN at 2am.  Hmmm….just what are you trying to tell us? 

 

We went to the private clinic in town without the ngt.  We managed to syringe feed him MOST of his feedings or get him to take a little by bottle (horray!)  Apparently, he’s in to showing off because the entire time we were there he was all smiley and cooing and laughing….funny funny….you supposed to be SICK when we are at the private clinic as our last resort…play it convincingly.  Guess no one told him, cause he even took half of his 2p bottle by bottle while we were waiting in the waiting room and then allowed me to syringe feed him the rest.  Everyone thought he was really cute.  Yeah, yeah…..so the results:  HIV NEGATIVE!!!  We were ALL surprised and I still don’t believe it!  What else don’t I believe?  Oh that ALL his blood tests (blood counts, chemistries, cardiac and liver enzymes) were all impeccably NORMAL.  His x-ray was unremarkable.  I looked at the other erin and said, are you SURE those are HIS results???  So after seeing 2 big person mds and a pediatrician who was very uninterested in us (probably cause he was called in on a holiday…what holiday? that’s still unclear, but it’s “official”), we were told he had allergies and that we should give him claritan and keep his environment more clean.  What I wanted to say was A-he lives with 32 other kids in one house.  B-they bleach the floor twice a day and he doesn’t crawl so believe me his blanket is a clean environment and C-he could be leaving in a reed hut with sand as his floor, a fire outside for cooking, no door or real roof, and could be carried around in capalana all day walking the dirty dusty streets where people throw trash and pee on the side of the road.  But, I refrained from mentioning such and said thank you very much.  We are still waiting for the results of his ppd (to test for tuberculosis) and will return to see yet another md (a 2^nd pediatrician) and hopefully will get some more advice on why he’s constantly tired, having lots of infections, isn’t growing, has a very poor suck for a 9 month old, is super behind developmentally, and has a murmur and palmor pallor (his palms are as white as my hands…no maybe whiter and I’m currently very pale) like nobody’s business!  We are very very thankful that he is HIV negative and that there are no signs of anything serious, but we are all perplexed as to what’s going on with this guy and we still don’t have any answers…also this is the last line so…..

 

Thanks for all the prayers.  They even got all their blood on the very first stick today (yeah)-Dionisio and I were very thankful for that and they had a real xray machine where I could lay him down on a bed so they could do his chest xray while he slept like the baby that he is (as opposed to standing behind a lead shield and holding him by this arms dangling in front of the xray machine…yeah that’s what they do!).  At least we got a few answers.  Tonight, he’s bunking with me again until I can reliably get him to take his feedings by syringe or bottle for at least 24 hours before I release him to the very medically untrained tias that work in the baby house!  I will update you Wednesday when we know more!  Thanks again to everyone that has sent emails of encouragement and kept us in your prayers!  I feel very refreshed today after a good night’s rest and a two hour nap yesterday!