Jan 8th More results, still no direction

I spoke with Dr Zapata's office a couple of times today. I called in first thing cause Ashlyne mentioned last night after youth group she had been experiencing difficulty breathing off and on the last few days. She said there was no pattern and not if she was running around. Ashley with Dr Z's called back and instructed us to take Ash to her primary doctor in Kearney to be examined and they had gotten her stool sample results from Dec 19th. Her Cal-protectin (spelling is prob wrong) levels were elevated which is an inflammatory marker in the stool for Crohn's patients. UGH! So basically our exciting Dec 16th visit showing improvement was not the total picture, the visual looked good but the labs are not coming back very good. We are still waiting on Monday's labs, Dr Z does not want to make any decisions regarding her treatment until he gets those results. Back to Ashlyne's breathing issue, after sitting in the dr's office for over an hour, Dr Paysen could see no issues that might be causing the breathing issue. Her one thought was that Ash was starting to react to the Gentimiacin (antiobiotic) that she started back on last Thursday and suggested maybe putting Ash on Zyrtec and Benedryl if the symptoms increase or she started showing other symptoms. Dr Paysen was quite perplexed and wanted me to discuss her findings with Dr Z before we did anything. While Darin, Dr Paysen and I sat there and discussed all this, for some reason it came to me maybe it had to do with Ashlyne's head position. She had a breathing issue when we were in the waiting room, she was looking down doing homework. We mentioned it to Ash and she said that could be it, she has had increased swelling in her face and neck over the holidays and now that she is back in school she is looking down a lot more. Ashlyne is going to monitor the symptoms now in relation to if she is looking down or not. I am relieved that it may be something so simple. Dr Z in the meantime is going to have Ashlyne continue to drop off the prednisone, starting tomorrow she will drop to 15mg for 5 days, then 10mg for 5 and so forth until her next appt on Jan 27th. Hopefully Monday's lab will come in tomorrow and we will hear something more positive.

Wendy