Annie's Colonoscopy and Endoscopy

Annie had her follow-up colonoscopy and endoscopy yesterday.  We were nervous about her prep but her magnesium citrate didn't seem to have any effect as of midnight the night before, so we actually decided to give her almost a double dose of Miralax.  The next morning we learned it worked really well!  Needless to say, Annie got a nice long bath!  The procedure lasted about 1 1/2 hours and after that Annie only needed about 10 minutes in recovery before her general anesthesia wore off--even more evidence of how much difficulty she has sleeping lately!  She's usually in recovery for an hour.

The doctor brought us copies of all the images and although we weren't shown images from her colonoscopy a few weeks ago, the doctor said her tissues look much better.  Her esophagus, stomach, and duodenum all look completely normal, as well as all sections of her colon and cecum, with the exception of two psuedo-polyps in the sigmoid.  He saw one of those during her sigmoidoscopy a few weeks ago, but thought it would go away when the inflammation went down.  He considered possibly removing the polyps today, but since they don't have necks like regular polyps they would be difficult to remove.  He did take biopsies from them, so that will help give him some more information.

So there was no visual evidence of inflammation, however, it's the biopsies that will give the most information as to what's going on in her tissues.  In addition to the biopsies from the psuedo-polyps, about a dozen more biopsies were taken from all different parts of her GI tract.  We were optimistic seeing the images and hearing that nothing bad was found visually today, but as we know from her last scope, things can look pretty good, but the biopsies might tell a different story.  So we'll have to wait until next week to get all the biopsy results that will tell us if Annie does in fact have some kind of chronic inflammatory bowel problem. 

The good news is that because the doctor did see visual evidence of a decrease in inflammation, he has started to slowly wean Annie off the prednisone which is causing her to be so irritable and not sleep!  It will take about four weeks to wean her off it, so hopefully we'll all start sleeping better soon!  Also, we anticipate that Annie will be able to return to school after the winter break since her immunity won't be compromised by the prednisone any longer.  Annie will be thrilled!  As for everything else, we are still instructed to continue the mesalamine to help her colon heal and keep inflammation down, and we also need to keep her on her specialty formula, neocate, at least until we find out what the biopsies show.  We get the sense from the doctor that Annie might need to remain on mesalamine and neocate for a longer term.  Unfortunately, those are the two things that require the most prep and time to give to Annie--the mesalamine must be mixed in applesauce and administered through her g-tube with a special extension set, and the neocate is a powder formula that must be mixed, measured, and refrigerated each day.  Oh well, it's a small price to pay for a healthier Annie! Now we just wait for biopsy results!