A Peek Inside

Nora had her upper GI with small bowel follow through yesterday. We haven’t seen the official report yet but what we saw on the monitor and the comments made by the radiologist were very encouraging. Her small bowel is uniform and there is no bowel dilation. The unofficial guesstimate made by the radiologist is that her small bowel has at least doubled if not tripled in length since her initial surgery which would put her up to 9-13.5cm from starting off with 4.5cm. We are very anxious to hear the actual measurement. The radiologist who did the procedure, Dr. Albright, was the one who did Nora’s original upper and lower GI’s on the day she was born and also when she was a week old. He remembered Nora’s case very clearly and was excited to see how well she is doing.

When the barium was in Nora’s small intestine, it sloshed back and forth several times before emptying into the large intestine. Dr. Albright said this was something he doesn’t ordinarily see, usually it just goes straight down or it may slosh a couple of times but not as much as Nora’s did. It will be interesting to see what Nora’s GI doctors have to say about it and if this is something commonly seen in short bowel patients. Regardless is was a very exciting for me to see with my own eyes that Nora’s small intestine is holding onto substance longer than the norm for whatever reason.

Nora also had a complete abdominal ultrasound which surprisingly was harder on her than the upper GI. The tech had to push pretty hard on her tummy to get all the shots and it was obviously uncomfortable for her. All along I was worried about her not drinking the barium and being upset about having to fast for 5 hours beforehand but she stayed happy and drank the unflavored barium down like it was juice and was then upset when it was all gone….only a taste our Nora could love. 🙂 We’ll be sure to post more details when we get them. Here’s Nora awaiting to drink her yummy chalking drink.

Nora is feeling much better from her cold last week but she’s still a bit snuffy and it seems now it’s Daddy’s turn to have the cold. Hopefully we’ll all clear up soon and not keep passing it back and forth to each other.