Breathalyzer

As many of you know, my wife – Leah – has been experiencing some very disturbing abdominal pain for a little over a month now. It all started while she was at CPC (Children's Pastors Confernce) in San Diego at the beginning of February. Near the end of the conference week, she woke with discomfort in her abdomen, and at that point she dismissed it as the result of sleeping wrong. By the end of the weekend, however, she was doubled over in pain and basically unable to eat anything without making the situation even worse. As a result, we decided to seek medical attention.

First thing Monday morning, Leah went to the local Care Now to be seen. The doctors there ran several tests, took some X-rays, and finally determined that it was likely one of three things: a gall stone, a kidney stone, or appendicitis. Because the Care Now does not have the equipment to check for any of these conditions and because Leah was running a low fever at the time, they recommended that she go to the ER immediately.

I met Leah at the ER a little before lunch, took Sydney to get something to eat, transferred Sydney to Dad (who had agreed to watch her and the rest of the girls until Leah and I were done), and went back to the hospital. Of course, I got back just as they were taking her to a room. A troop of nurses came in relatively soon and took some more samples for testing (why can't they just get results from Care Now?) and set Leah up for an IV. Just after all of that, though, is when it really got fun.

Junior Doctor Sally Sue (not her real name and she was actually a PA) came in looking like she was skipping out on seventh period to be there with us, and told us she would handling the case. As an aside, why can't we see real doctors in America anymore? And do you really think that our current President will make the situation better? As I was saying, though, Junior Doc came in and started poking and prodding all over Leah's abdomen. After a round of high intensity pain reactions from Leah, she determined that it was probably one of three things: gall stone, kidney stone, or appendicitis. Duh. Already knew that.

She told us that someone would be in shortly to collect samples for testing, they would get her setup for an IV, and then she would need to drink a contrast dye for the scan so that they could see each of those items. Two of three were already done, so this shouldn't take much longer….

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Four and a half hours later, a guy from imaging came in and told Leah it was time to go take a picture of her abdomen. Hang on a sec. She was supposed to have a contrast dye, I thought. He just looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said that the doctor must have made a mistake. And off they went.

The doctor made a mistake? Really? That's the best answer I can get? I had them send Junior Doctor back in to find out what was going on. A few minutes later (Wow! That was fast for a hospital) she and Leah were back in the room, and she informed me that the couldn't look for both a stone and appendicitis at the same time because one only shows with contrast dye and the other only shows without. They (I presume "they" means she and an actual doctor) had decided to look for the stone first since they could do that without dye.

Of course, by this time, I was getting concerned about the girls and homework and dinner, and I knew that it would be forever before we would have any results, so I asked what kind of window I had to work with. Junior Doc told me an hour. I was like, "In an hour you'll have the results and an hour after that you'll come tell us? Or like in ten minutes you'll have the results and in an hour you'll tell us?" She just gave me the evil eye and said she'd be back as soon as she could.

Unbelievably, she was back in about 10 minutes with the results. And by some miracle of modern technology they were able to see that her appendix, gall bladder, and kidneys were all fine. Okay, so if all three possibilities are eliminated, then what's going on? Junior Doc said it was bound to be a UTI gone awry and prescribed some antibiotics.

That didn't really make much sense to either Leah or I, and as Leah's pain continued even with treatment, we decided to try some different things. I called a friend of mine in family practice, and Leah spoke with an OB friend of hers. Both suggested that see someone else.

So, Leah went next to her OB. The OB should have the best handle of all on women's abdomens, so it seemed to make sense. Unfortunately, she came up empty, too. After every test they could think of, they confirmed that it was not stones and not appendicitis, but they had no idea what was going on. The OB suggested that it might have been some kind of infection in her intestines and that it could clear up on its own in a few days. If not, though, then she suggested that Leah go see a gastro doctor.

Of course, it did not get any better on its own, and Leah ended up at the Gastro doctor a little over a week ago. At first, he thought it was likely an infected gall bladder and he started running tests down that road. Those tests turned up negative. Next step, endoscopy. Maybe there was something going on in her stomach that was causing the issues.

Last week, the did the endoscopy, took some biopsies, and basically told us to wait for results. They said that she had a rash on the inside of her stomach but the results of the biopsies would tell us more about why and how to treat it.

Just yesterday, we got those results. Apparently, Leah has a bacterial infection in her stomach and that has caused the rash. They say that this kind of infection is not uncommon, but that it is uncommon for it to present with the symptoms that Leah has. They said that more often it leads to complications like ulcers or even stomach cancer before it is identified. Thank goodness it didn't get that bad. Here's the best part, though, they told Leah that when she goes back in a few weeks, they will do a blood test to see if it is cleared up.

What?

I asked Leah, "If they can do a blood test to see if it's gone, then why couldn't they do a blood test to see if it was there?"

She agreed that was a good question, and called back to clarify. Apparently, what they actually said was that they will do a breath test to see if it is cleared up.

Again…what?

"So, if they can do a breath test to see if it's clear, then can't they do one to see if you have it?" I asked.

Leah had not clarified that as she was at the pharmacy and the pharmacist had just guessed her diagnosis based on the prescription and said, "Did they just do that simple breath test to identify this?"

Well, if you're meaning the, Let's See If You Can Breathe While We Shove a Garden Hose Down Your Throat Test, then yeah, that's what they did.

So, just to be clear, what we learned here is that if Leah had been pulled over for DWI, we might have had to pay a few hundred bucks to bail her out, but we would have had a diagnosis much faster than spending weeks and many thousands of dollars to get to the result.

In all seriousness, I'm glad that we finally have an answer. Leah is on the correct antibiotics now, and she is feeling much better. Thanks for all your calls and prayers. And I hope this never happens to you.