Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Our Sweet Tia

Thank you to each of you who have been so caring towards our family over the past month during Tia's illness. Each meal, gift, card, visit and prayer has meant so much to us as a family. We are so thankful to live life with such a caring community.
I have hesitated sharing much about what is going on with Tia but so many of you have been in contact with me asking about her and I have not had a chance to respond to many of you so this is the best way I know how. Almost four weeks ago Tia had what I thought was a stomach virus. I was not very concerned because several kids in her class at school had been sick with what seemed to be a 24 hour virus. After a few days of vomiting (Yes, this will not be a pleasant post) anything that went into her body,  I knew that we were not dealing with just a 24 hour virus. She had no other symptoms other that throwing up anytime she ate or drank anything. Tia was given Zofran from the pediatrician to help keep her food down but it didn't help her at all.
A few days of the Zofan not working we returned to the doctor and we were referred to a pediatric GI specialist a few days later. The day after seeing the GI doctor Tia ended up in the hospital and was given fluids and they cleaned out her entire GI system by means of a tube in her nose dripping medicine directly into her stomach (which was so much fun for both of us) for the weekend . The doctors were hopeful that Tia had a virus that had shut down her GI system and once it was cleaned out she would be back to normal. This however wasn't the issue.
During the clean out process they were able to do some testing and found that Tia tested positive for H Pylori bacteria. Her GI doctor feels strongly that this was probably due to unclean water (or maybe food) from several years ago in Ethiopia. The doctors do feel that her brothers from Ethiopia should be tested as well. As soon as our girl is better Garrett and Lemi will be tested. (This breaks my heart and I will one day blog about this- Tia and Garrett lost their birth dad, prior to their birth, to a waterborne illness that very well could have been this type of bacteria)
Tia has had several tests over the past few weeks and has another scheduled for Monday morning to make sure that nothing more is going on in her body. The treatment for the H Pylori is several antibiotics given at the same time for about a month. This will be a long process because these medications can make her nauseous and cause vomiting as well.
We are hopeful that this is the root cause of her illness and can easily be taken care of. She is continuing to be sick many times a day but we are thankful that she can now tolerate fluids and some of her food stays down during the day. The past week and a half she started to become very weak and tired from lack of nutrition- this has been so hard for me to watch. I am thankful that the past few days I have seen her energy beginning to return and she still is no where near her normal energy level but she is on the upswing.
I would love to ask you to join me in praying some specific things for Tia. She currently takes 5 pills and some liquid medicines twice daily. It is hard for her to get just one pill down and so 10 a day is somewhat overwhelming. She is literally in tears when I say it is time to take her medicine- just silent tears pouring as her willing heart tries to get the medicine down. Pray for her to be able to swallow pills like a champ! Also pray with me that once she gets the medicines down they will stay down. Yesterday and today we have not been successful keeping all of the medicine down. It is a crazy cycle of the bacteria making her sick and the medicine not being able to work because she is not able to keep it down. It is a very frustrating process as a mom and I know it must be even more frustrating for my sweet girl. The last thing that I would love for you to pray for is that if this bacteria is not the main source of this  illness that the main source would soon be found during the upcoming tests.
 I want to say thank you again for your concern, care and love this past month. It has been a long few weeks for our family and we are so thankful for the outpouring of His love on our family using each of you. I am so thankful that our girl is here with us where she can get the healthcare she needs. I have been reminded the past few weeks to pray for kids all over the world that do not have the resources to get the medical care that they so desperately need. I will keep you posted as she continues to heal.