Travis' Healthy Jouney

So this little journey began when a beautiful little baby boy was born in December of 2008.  His name is Travis, and soon after he was born he started throwing up almost everything he was eating.  We struggled with different kinds of formula for a while and I quite nursing him completely.  He slowly fell from the 98th percentile to the 1st percentile and hung on the growth curve by a hair.  For 13 months we tried different diets, positions, techniques and timing of feedings.  We prayed really hard that he would grow out of what ever it was that was the problem. When Travis was 12 months old we were in Las Vegas over Christmas break and he had a bit of a fever and we could tell he didn't feel good.  That night he had a seizure.  A little history, our Damon suffers from a condition called Febrile Seizures.  For those of you that don't know what this is here is a run down.  Febrile Seizures are very common seizures that occur in children until about the age 5.  The seizure is brought on by the rapid rise in body temperature usually caused by an illness of some sort.  The seizures usually last between 30 seconds and 3 minutes, they cause no damage, pain or lasting affects and usually children out grow them by age 5.  So back to Travis, he had a seizure that lasted about 2 minutes.  Given Damon's history we were not too worried about it and figured that he had the same seizure disorder that his older brother has.  We left Las Vegas and made a trip to West Yellowstone in Montana.  We stayed there for a few days until Travis had another seizure.  This seizure seemed a lot different to me and lasted way too long.  About 6 minutes into the seizure we called 911 and had an ambulance come.  By the time the ambulance got there, the seizure had stopped and was a total of 8 minutes long.  We enjoyed a very long ambulance ride to the hospital in Rexburg, Idaho where we stayed for the night.  When we got back home to Elko we took him to his pediatrician and decided that we needed to take him to Primary Children's Medical Center to the GI (gastrointestinal) specialist to see about his constant throwing up and the the Neurology Department the see about the seizures.  After about a month we were able to get appointments and after lots of testing, x-rays, blood work, EEG, and an MRI he was to diagnosed with Febrile Seizure disorder and as having Severe Reflux and a Significant Hiatal Hernia.  So we all know what Febrile Seizures are and we all know that Reflux is heartburn.  So the Hiatal Hernia is where part of his stomach is protruding up into the chest cavity through a too big hole in the diaphragm.  So we had a diagnosis.......yippie!!!!!!!!!!  Now on the the treatment.  They started him on a high dose of Prevacid which is an anti-reflux medication.  This helped a ton.  He quickly started to put on weight and stopped throwing up so much I think in the first days of him taking the medication he went 11 days without throwing up.  So we made an appointment with a surgeon at Primary Children's and decided that he needed to have this problem Surgically repaired.  On Wednesday of this week he went in for surgery.  They did a procedure called a Nissen.  A routine surgery to correct severe reflux.  They also closed up the hole in his diaphragm and sutured his esophogus to his diaphragm to hold it in place.  The surgery was done all lapriscopically so there was no huge incision just 5 little incisions called ports.  He woke up from the surgery and was really groggy and slept most of the rest of the day.  Thursday morning he was up and walking around with a little pain.  By Thursday night you would have never know he just had major surgery.  He was running full board, laughing, smiling and putting on a show for the nurses on the unit.  By this morning (Friday) he was doing so good they sent us home which was a day or two early.  We are home now in Elko and Travis is sleeping very happily in his own bed and I too will be sleeping happily in my own bed tonight.  Travis has not thrown up since the surgery and will hopefully never throw up again.  Yes you heard me.  This surgery made it so that he is never able to throw up again for the rest of his life.  So the first questions asked are usually, "what if he gets the flu or gets sick?".  The answer is he has to tough it out and if gets so bad that he is dry heaving we will give him some anti-nausea medication.  So over all we are so excited to be home and have all of this hopefully behind us,  we will keep some posts up on the progress of his recovery.