The Bad Thing
My granddaughter A turned 10 two days after Christmas but she did not eat any birthday cake nor play with her gifts. When I arrived in Dalton on December 20th I was looking forward to a long enjoyable visit with my son, family, and especially grandchildren, whom I hadn't seen in many months. Instead I walked into a tragedy unfolding when the Distaff grandparents met me at the airport and A was with them. They had just come from the doctor where she'd had her second ENT workup with an esophageal scan with barium and all that crap, but the abuelas knew this was just ruling out.
Cutting to the chase. One googles "functional dysphagia" and "post-traumatic feeding disorder" to triangulate on the diagnosis -- after an episode of choking the pre-adolescent child develops a severe phobia of swallowing, which can become so severe that the child is unable to swallow even her own saliva. By January 2 she was in the hospital with a nasogastric tube in place. With tubal feeding her electrolytes were rebalanced and she regained some hydration. She stayed in the hospital five days and was send home still with the NG tube. Sees a therapist 2x a week as does the family. Has improved to the extent that she can now swallow clear liquids and some things like a smoothie. Ate mashed potatoes. Once. For Jorge. Has not been to school since before the Christmas break.
All this is accompanied by severe, frequent, panic attacks. Zoloft was introduced about 10 days ago but so far is not working.
If things continue this way she will go to a residential treatment facility. Amazingly enough there is one in Chicago at the same hospital where her aunt works. This is a good thing, about the only good thing about all this. I'm not able to describe how the stress of this has affected every member of the family, and let's not talk about the financial cost as well as the psychic one. They have good insurance but there are limits in this fucked up country.
The shrinks say that fear of death is part of the underlying pathology in this kind of phobia, which is rare. The subtext to all this is the death of her cousin in 2007 at age 15. No words for what the other grandparents are going through. No words for any of this, really. My daughter in law prays her ass off, my son is distant and uncommunicative, my grandson plays video games. My daughter and I talk on the phone and cry. 2012 sucks.
Cutting to the chase. One googles "functional dysphagia" and "post-traumatic feeding disorder" to triangulate on the diagnosis -- after an episode of choking the pre-adolescent child develops a severe phobia of swallowing, which can become so severe that the child is unable to swallow even her own saliva. By January 2 she was in the hospital with a nasogastric tube in place. With tubal feeding her electrolytes were rebalanced and she regained some hydration. She stayed in the hospital five days and was send home still with the NG tube. Sees a therapist 2x a week as does the family. Has improved to the extent that she can now swallow clear liquids and some things like a smoothie. Ate mashed potatoes. Once. For Jorge. Has not been to school since before the Christmas break.
All this is accompanied by severe, frequent, panic attacks. Zoloft was introduced about 10 days ago but so far is not working.
If things continue this way she will go to a residential treatment facility. Amazingly enough there is one in Chicago at the same hospital where her aunt works. This is a good thing, about the only good thing about all this. I'm not able to describe how the stress of this has affected every member of the family, and let's not talk about the financial cost as well as the psychic one. They have good insurance but there are limits in this fucked up country.
The shrinks say that fear of death is part of the underlying pathology in this kind of phobia, which is rare. The subtext to all this is the death of her cousin in 2007 at age 15. No words for what the other grandparents are going through. No words for any of this, really. My daughter in law prays her ass off, my son is distant and uncommunicative, my grandson plays video games. My daughter and I talk on the phone and cry. 2012 sucks.