Tummy Troubles...

A few months ago Matthew start to have some tummy troubles.  He was having diarrhea all the time.  We contacted the doctor's office we had at the time.  They told us to try a few different things.  None of them worked.  After I started at the Mayo Clinic and got new insurance we decided to set up an appointment and get a new family medicine doctor on October 25, 2012.  Our new family med doctor Nicole started some tests right away.  One thing that she noticed was that since January of 2011 Matthew had only gain 2 pounds.  He was only 49lb and had been 47 back in 2011. She ordered a Blood and Stool test.  She also told us that if it was above her she would find us the help he needed.  2 days later we got the results.  Matthew's Iron and Zinc were low other then that they were inconclusive.  She sent us for a Pediatric Gasroenterology Consult with Dr. Tung. Dr. Tung decided to run the same test again only with more additions to those once they got to the lab. She had us try Lactaid Milk and Pills thinking that maybe that was it, while we waited for those to come back. She didn't want to start any BIG tests, colonoscopy or EGD,  until we tried all the little ones.  She didn't want to put him through them if there was no need.

On the 5th of November we got a call from Dr. Tung.  Matthew's stool had grown a parasite called Plesiomonas Shigelloides.  This parasite can come from many different things such as fresh water, fresh water fish, shellfish, just about any farm animal, dogs, cats and toads.  So just about everything little boys touch.  And if you know Matthew very well you would know that he loves every creature! We treated this with Bactrum for 10 days.  After the 10 days nothing had changed.  Dr. Tung suggested we wait 1 week and see if anything changed.  No such luck.  So we had to do another Stool sample to make sure it was gone.  His stool came back clean.  So that meant on to the scopes.