Mount Hood Panorama

Mount Hood

We arrived in Portland and our hotel in Beaverton last night.  The direct flight went well and the kiddos enjoyed the experience again. Today we didn't have much planned since Stacey had to work over lunch.

In the morning we drove around Beaverton a little bit. We saw Nike's World Headquarters and the various running trails, tracks, and soccer fields that were on their campus for testing and employee use. It was pretty cool.  We found out first geocache in Oregon near a park and met up with Jen and her two boys for about an hour at another park before having to go back to the hotel for work and naps.

After naps we piled back into the car and drove about 70 miles east to check out Mount Hood. Since there are many trees along the way, we didn't get a good view of it until we were really close. Before we got to the area we stopped at a few places and caught glimpses of the old Oregon Trail, followed by Stacey and I stating that each other had died from dysentery or drowned and then debates over whether we should attempt to cross or ford any river we came across.

I had looked up a few things online about the route and wanted to stop at Trillium Lake. It was just too nice to pass up and it ended up being our destination for the day. The kids played by throwing pebbles into the lake and posing for pictures. We stopped for a few minutes and had a picnic dinner before heading back to town.

An hour and a half east and you can be in the mountains and ski, or in the summer hike and fish.  Tomorrow we'll show you what's about an hour and a half west, the Pacific Ocean.  Not a bad gig.

Results From Jonathan's Tests

We got the results back on the scopes and biopsies that were performed on Jonathan a couple of weeks ago. Both his GI doctor and a second opinion agreed that he has some sort of chronic inflammation of his GI system. This could either be due to a disease or allergy, or both.

Dr Waasdorp was able to send a scope the entire length of his digestive system.  From the mouth she was able to see all the way down through his small intestine and coming from the other direction, all the way up his large intestine. She noticed that he had red areas of inflammation pretty much all over, but more noticeable in his duodenum (beginning of the small intestine) and all throughout his colon. She also observed that his duodenum was lacking some ridges or texture and that the villi were shorter.  Right after the procedures she was able to tell us what she saw, but that to really know she needed to look at the biopsies under a microscope.

The following week we heard back on the biopsies and she believed it to be an eosinophilic condition of some kind.  She didn't see anything that looked like Crohn's and was hesitant to call it an "itis", but definitely discovered something. A diagnosis with this sort of thing doesn't seem to be made upfront, because it's rare and not well understood.  It also could be simply related to him ingesting food, medicine, or other substances that he's allergic to.  There is a difference between having a disease and being allergic to something in that you can control one a lot more than the other simply by removing the problem.

We don't know much at this point, which is why we've been referred to a team of doctors at Children's Hospital in Denver for next steps.  As I mentioned above, it could be a variety of things, causes, and ways to approach this. Although we don't have the full picture yet, an eosinophilic issue seems like a very good explanation for everything we've experienced with Jonathan based on the symptoms we've read about.  Poor nurser, poor growth, vomiting, feeding issues, could all be related to this problem.  Motility (how fast or slow his stomach empties) is also a complication of this problem.

Yesterday we started him on Prednisone, a corticosteroid drug.  This drug can have some bad side effects, so we're watching him closely. It does a good job of calming allergic reactions by suppressing the immune system, but it also effects his adrenaline production and open him up to infections. We're watching his behavior for signs of problems as well, since this can also cause some people to become over emotional, just want every parent wants in a three year old boy. I'm hopeful that the medicine will help. He's asking for food again, which is obviously a good sign.

In some ways we're very glad that we finally have a lead. Instead of me trying to explain what this immune system/white blood cell reaction and inflammation is, I'll instead give you guys a link and a description to help describe the kind of thing we believe we're dealing with. Over the next several months we'll probably find out more a more what is causing this, what it really is, and how we can move forward.

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What Is an Eosinophilic Disorder?

Eosinophilic enteropathy is a complicated digestive system disorder in which eosinophils, a type of white blood cell, are found in above-normal amounts in one or more specific places in the digestive system and/or the blood.

When the body wants to attack a substance, such as an allergy-triggering food or airborne allergen, eosinophils respond by moving into the area and releasing a variety of toxins. However, when the body produces too many eosinophils, they can cause chronic inflammation, resulting in tissue damage.

These rare diseases are diagnosed according to where the elevated levels of eosinophils are found:

Eosinophilic esophagitis (esophagus)
Eosinophilic gastritis (stomach)
Eosinophilic enteritis (small intestine)
Eosinophilic colitis (large intestine)
Hypereosinophilic syndrome (blood and any organ)

This condition can be divided into two types, Primary and Secondary. The Primary type is further subdivided into allergic and non-allergic forms. The allergic type occurs in association with food allergies, while the non-allergic form occurs when no obvious cause can be found to explain the high number of eosinophils in the digestive system. Because of this, the non-allergic form is thought to be evidence that the body is attacking itself and considered to be an autoimmune disorder.

http://www.njpaeos.org/egid.html

Teacher's Pet

Julia, on the way home from school today: "I smoked Mrs. Miller. I counted all the way to 100!"

First Day Of Kindergarten

Julia loved her first day of Kindergarten. She's so excited to go back tomorrow.

The entire family saw her off to her first day. As tradition would have it, she was chauffeured to her first day of school in Daddy's truck. All of the kids were gathered on the blacktop according to their class. Julia's teacher, Mrs Miller, was waiting for her class with her name on a big sign.

Julia was a little bit nervous at first, but quickly remembered what school was like. She remembered everything from the day and told us all about it afterwards. She was in a great mood the rest of the day.

Quandary Peak

Distance - 6.8 miles
Elevation Gain - 3,450 feet
Time - 5 hours

It had been over a year since I had last been at 14,000 feet and almost two years since I had really hiked a 14er. It was time to get back out there. I also wanted to start hiking the easy 14ers by myself, so this day was reserved on the calendar in advance.

I had a busy week at work and had sprinted at field day about 12 hours prior to leaving the house, so it was a good thing I had packed in advance. I left home about 3:30 in the morning to make sure I was on the trail shortly after sunrise. The drive wasn't too bad - only a short two and half hour trip to just outside Breckenridge.

I picked this peak because it's one of the easiest 14ers in the state. You can walk right up to the top. I also knew there would be many people and cell service on the trail, just in case. I chuckled at the sign posted at the beginning of the trail that warned people "there are no easy 14ers".  In the end it wasn't easy, but it was probably the easiest one I have done so far.  Although I wasn't going that fast, I constantly passed people and made it to the top in just under two and a half hours. 

I wasn't expecting much in terms of scenery, so I was pleasantly surprised at the views and wildlife. There were hundreds of people on the trail, so my solo trip was far from it.  Towards the top I met up with Andrew and David from Denver, and we just ended up hiking together the rest of the day. 

We also ended up hiking with two mountain goats. They weren't afraid of anyone. They probably see hundreds of people every week. We took a picture of the mountain goat at the summit with Andrew's sign for the goat's photo album, but he didn't seem interested in getting a copy.

Although I'm tired and sore, I'm glad that I did it.  Next month I want to finish up a trip that I wasn't able to complete a few winters ago due to weather. It will be a good place to stop before the snow returns since it will mean I've made it to the top of one-third of the 14ers in Colorado.

Dress Up Trivia

Guess which picture(s) are:

Julia dressing Jonathan as a football player, Dad and Jonathan at REI, and Dad and the kids at Walmart?

Fun Weekend

I took Jonathan miniature golfing, and he proved that certain obstacles can fit both a golf ball and a little boy. Later in the afternoon Julia and Jonathan played and collected rain water for the flowers and bushes.

Jonathan

It appears as if we've finally found something wrong with Jonathan. It would explain a lot of what we've been experiencing. A few posts ago I posted an email from Stacey about how we were gearing up for another round of tests and visits to the doctor. The very first test that we ran last week was to check his dirty diaper for signs of inflammation in his intestinal tract. This week we got the test results back. The normal range for this test for his age is around 15 - 50. He came back over 810. This signals signs of significant inflation, suggesting something like ulcerative colitis or Crohn's Disease. Considering two of Stacey's brothers are dealing with Crohn's, we would not at all be surprised if he has the disease.

The results prompted the doctor to move the date of his procedures to Friday. She'll do an upper endoscopy (send a small camera down his throat into his stomach and small intestine) as well as a colonoscopy. We won't know anything certain until after we do this procedure. It's possible that nothing will come back, but unlikely. Unfortunately, this requires an all-day stay in the hospital to include anesthesia and recovery.

In an odd way we're slightly relieved to find out there really is something wrong. It's an answer. Obviously, we don't want anything to be wrong, but we've figured for a long time that there was still some underlying issue going on.This may mean the beginning of the end of the feeding tube and not keeping up with the growth curves, but it would also mean the beginning of something else he'll have to deal with the rest of his life. We will know more at the end of next week.

Bon Voyage

Here's my sendoff to work from Julia. This has been going on for the past few weeks, and a lot of the time the "lil stinker" joins in.