Prayers for Cooper

Many of you are aware that Cooper has been having some issues over the past several months with vomiting for no apparent reason. He will wake up and not act himself, just laying around and not talking much. This will be followed by vomiting a couple of times and then all of the sudden he will sit up and be completely fine. It doesn't seem to correlate with eating or with any particular dietary changes. The episodes are occuring every 2 to 3 weeks almost like clockwork. There is a condition known as cyclic vomiting which could explain these episodes. However, it is a diagnosis of "exclusion" meaning they must exclude all other possible causes. We have ruled out diabetes and have done basic metabolic screening that has all checked out ok thankfully. We went in for a follow up exam today since the vomiting has continued and were informed by the pediatrician that the next step is to rule out anything neurological. Unexplained vomiting can occur from tumors in specific areas of the brain. The Dr. feels the chances of this are EXTREMELY slim as Coop has had no additional neurological signs or symptoms. But, it must be ruled out nonetheless. So, the plan is for Cooper to have an MRI on Wed. July 1st at 7:30 in the morning (we have to be there at 5:30 am YIKES!) to rule this out. The scariest part of this for us is that he needs to be put under general anesthesia because the risks of conscious sedation with his asthma are too great. Having a child with a reactive airway undergo anesthesia is freaking us out a bit. I am confident that they will find nothing on the scan but unsure of how he will react to anesthesia. On top of that Coop has been battling a nasty exacerbation of his asthma this week and has been doing frequent breathing treatments. The Dr. listened to him today (day 6 of this exacerbation) and he is still wheezing a lot so he put him on an oral steroid. We need him to be 100% healthy for his test. Please say a few extra prayers over the next week that his scans will be clear and that he responds well to the anesthesia. We are hoping to have him home by noon on Wed. happy and healthy. The next step after ruling this out is some further metabolic screening and a referral to a Pediatric Gastroenterologist in Omaha as they are the only one that can make the diagnosis of cyclic vomiting. If this is what he has he will likely grow out of it. He has some medicine at home that we can give him to stop the vomiting when it does occur and it has worked great the last two times we have given it. Cyclic vomiting has been identified as a precursor to migraines and often kids will out grow the vomiting and then start battling migraines. :( We hope this will not be the case but will gladly take migraines over the alternative. Please also pray that the steroids kick in quickly and that he is healthy by Wed. for the test. We would like our answers as soon as possible.