Abby's Hard Day

Abby had a bunch of labs drawn in November, 12 ml worth of blood, which is a lot and everything came back normal, except for one growth hormone marker that was a little low. So because of that low reading, we had to have Abby get a Growth Hormone Stimulation Test. We did that yesterday and it was not very fun, actually it was downright torture, but Abby is such a trooper and she did great. Our pediatrician, who loves to joke with us, told us to have fun when we saw him last week. We want to send him a postcard with a couple of these pictures, with "Wishing you were here!" on it.
Abby had not eaten since 1am. I woke up in the middle of the night and woke her up and fed her some food before she had to start fasting, so she would not be starving the whole day. The test started at 9:30am. This picture was before the test, waiting in the front of the office. She did not say anything about being hungry, which I thought she would be saying the whole ride to Littleton hospital. We brought Ellie with us because she had a barky cough the night before the test and I did not want to send her to school. Will, Ellie and I all ate breakfast before Abby woke up so she would not have to see us eating.
So, once they took us back, they weighed Abby and with her clothes on, she weighed a whopping 22 pounds and took a blood pressure. Then they put an IV in her. That was hard, because she started crying and I started crying because I did not want to see her hurt. After the IV, they had to give her a shot of glucagon that helps with the test, and it is not a quick shot. The nurse, Kristen, had to slowly insert it in her leg over 15 seconds. That was the longest shot EVER! Then they started the infusion of Arginine, which only took 45 minutes.

They had to poke her fingers twice to check sugars and make sure her sugar was not bottoming out, or they would have to stop the test. Abby felt like crap, she would not even smile for the camera, which is bad, because she usually always smiles. Then the rest of the test, she had to lay on the bed and they came and drew blood every 30 minutes for three hours.
We watched Shrek and Mulan to pass the time. Meanwhile, Ellie was running a temperature of 100.2 degrees so we were lucky that the nurse gave us some Tylenol so we did not have two girls that felt icky.

We were so blessed by Heavenly Father that the IV pulled back blood and worked the whole time, because except for the 2 finger sticks, the shot and the IV, Abby did not have to have any extra pokes. And, when the IV came out, it was bent funny and all of us were shocked that it worked the whole time, it should not have. Abby did so good, till the last blood draw, we gave her some juice when it was done and we tried to make her go slow, but she was chugging the juice and water. I gave her a snickers candy and she took a bite, looked at us funny and threw up. Will was trying to take away the rest of the snickers and Abby grabbed it and stuffed it in her mouth. She just needed to clear out her stomach and then she felt much better.

This was a picture taken today of the bruise left from the IV in her arm.

The funniest part of the test was at the end, Abby was eating and drinking and Robyn, a lab tech was going to take the IV out and was using some adhesive remover to make it less painful when the tape came off. Well, I wish I was video taping it, but Abby was getting really impatient and she finally said, "Just rip it off" because she did not want to wait for the adhesive remover, so we took the IV out fast and she was much happier. It caught all of us off guard, but it was so FUNNY! Both the girls did so good, so they each got a toy from the toy closet at the doctor's office.

After the test, we decided that Abby needed to be rewarded so we went to Chuck E Cheese's. The girls had so much fun and Abby ate 3 pieces of pizza. She was so hungry.
Showing off the prizes at Chuck E Cheese's! Both of them were feeling so much better.