Yellow

About three weeks ago, the stomach bug ran through our house.  During that week, our household consisted of 11 and it hit all but two of us.  Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.  Fun stuff.  The good news is that it only lasted a couple of days.  Well, except for one of us.  E. seemed to get the same stuff as the rest of us, only it seemed to hang on and never let go.  And it got worse and worse.  And the symptoms kept piling up.

Last week, I drug him to the doctor.  The doctor agreed with E. that his immune system probably just wasn't as strong as it used to be and so it was going to take him longer than the rest of us to get rid of this bug.  Things didn't seem right to me though.  This seemed more than the stomach bug.  E. was having stomach pains/cramps, nausea (although no vomiting), bloating, gas, intermittent diarrhea, back pain, fatigue, and loss of appetite.  I was sure he was dehydrated.  And I was sure his blood sugars were completely out of whack.  He hadn't had a decent night of sleep in weeks.  He looked downright miserable.  Oh and top of everything else, he passed a couple of kidney stones in midst of all this.

Yesterday, back to the doctor we went.  She suspected a possible bowel obstruction and recommended a visit with a gastro-intestinal doctor and a colonoscopy.  She sent us off with a lab slip as well.  While E. was getting his lab work, I was on the phone making his GI appt.  Turns out, you can't just make an appt for a colonoscopy when you're having symptoms ... you actually have to have a consultation first.  Thankfully, they had a cancellation so we were able to get an appt for today.

And that brings us to today.  E.'s lab work came back.  He has a urinary tract infection.  And a kidney infection.  And something is going on with his liver.  Like something crazy.

The four lab tests that have to do with liver are:
1) Bilirubin, Total ... normal 0.0-1.1 (E.'s = 8.4)
2) Alkaline Phosphatase ... normal 25-150 (E.'s = 390)
3) AST ... normal 0-40 (E.'s 173)
4) ALT ... normal 0-44 (E.'s 128).

So, a colonoscopy is out right now because there is no way he can handle the contrast.  He's been taken off a couple of his meds because they'll make his liver even worse.  He's been given a few prescriptions ... 1. antibiotics for the infections, 2. anti-itch meds (high bilirubin levels make you itch horribly ... who knew?), 3. anti-gas meds, and 4. anti-nausea meds.  He has more lab work to get done to test for a variety of Hepatitises (can you make Hepatitis plural?), the Epstein Barr Virus, as well as a few other things.  He's going in for an endoscopy on Thursday.  And he has an MRI and a MRCP of his liver on Friday.  I have no idea what an MRCP is yet and haven't had a chance to look it up, but it is done at the same time as the MRI and done at the radiation department at the hospital as well, so I'm assuming it's something similar.

He's lost 20 pounds in 3 weeks.  And yes, he's yellow.  Even his eyeballs are yellow.