Five days into the school year and my Jacob is home from school, he vomited at school. Knowing it's school policy that he needs to come home I brought him home. It will take this school a while before they realize not to send him home unless he has a fever or looks sick. The thing is Jacob has been going through this for about the last 3 years. He has no fever or other symptoms of being sick and randomly vomits and then continues his activities. There seems to be no rhythm or reason to his episodes.
Three years ago he started getting sick shortly after eating and I had no idea unless I found the evidence. It would happen once or twice a month, then wouldn't happen again for a few months. I assumed he was eating too quickly or playing hard shortly after eating and didn't really think too much of it. Over the years it started happening more frequently. This past year he seems to have settled into a pattern. For a while it would happen everyday right after lunch for a week or two. One day he had multiple symptoms at once. After lunch he went to recess and vomited, but also had a tightening in his chest, he panicked and started to hyperventilate and turned blue around his mouth. Not thinking clearly I left work (thankfully I worked in the lunch room and could be reached quickly) and drove him to the hospital (if it happens again I'll be sure to call 911; not sure why the school didn't do that before bringing him to me). By the time we got to the hospital his color had returned and his pulse ox. was normal and they sent us home with a clean bill of health. I started looking for food allergies. If he had peanuts on a day he was sick, I'd remove peanuts and foods made in factories that processed nuts. There was no change after eliminating different foods. I would eliminate them for a week or so before moving on to the next food. We have tried gluten free, dairy free, peanut free, nothing with tomatoes (tomatoes trigger my GERD, so I thought they might be giving him trouble too). Regardless of what he ate he'd still get sick. I started carrying Benadryl around just in cause he reacted to something and turned blue. Then he just stopped getting sick, for about two months he didn't have an episode. Then when it started up again, instead of getting sick right after eating he would be fine all day then get sick just before bed. This continued for about a week or two. It didn't matter how long between eating and heading to bed. Then it just stops again. From my past months Google research it sounds like Cyclic Vomiting.
A few weeks back we visited with cardio and the GI. I was not very excited when the GI suggested that the vomiting could be caused from anxiety. Jacob is my least anxiuos child. He wasn't anxious at recess playing with kids he's known for years, or anxious about going to bed. Once he had an episode while we were barbequing with friends at the beach. I just couldn't see that being the cause. He recommended having him see a therapist, but also arrange for him to have a scope and biospsy. The cardio said the tightening feeling is most likely growing pains from his chest and ribs growing. They did an ultrasound and everything looks good (she did find a very noticable mummer). She doesn't feel that his vomiting episodes are connected to his heart issues. That after the scope if I still felt there was a connection that she would take a second look.
Tomorrow we have to be at Children's Hospital at 7:30. Jacob will be the first patient of the day with a 9:00 appointment. We hoping to get some answers to why this continues to happen. We'd like to ask everyone to say prayer for him or send positive thoughts.
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