Kayden's surgery

Last spring Kayden got to ride in an ambulance to the local children's hospital. He had woken up in a panic because he was having trouble breathing. After demanding they x-ray his throat, he was diagnosed with croup. I wasn't surprised since he had croup so many times as a infant/toddler that his pediatrician would call in a script for steroids without even seeing him. This was a much more severe case but I didn't think much of it. When the same thing came up again in the fall, we started to investigate. The bottom line was, he should have outgrown croup by his age so we thought perhaps something else was going on.
The first doctor we saw was a pulmonologist. He evaluated Kayden and felt his problem was caused by acid inflaming the trachea. His office happened to be across the hall from a pediatric GI doc who saw us right away.
They wanted to do an endoscopy and scope his lungs. Kayden already had surgery scheduled to put new tubes in his ears so we decided to have the GI doc do their part while Kayden was already under anesthesia.(that made is sound much simpler than it actually was. Scheduling two separate doctors offices for the same surgery time at a children's hospital was no small feat. I'm so glad they worked hard to get it lined up)

Kayden was in great spirits before surgery. We had watched lots of YouTube videos on the surgeries he would be having so he was well prepared. The surgery was pushed back a few hours so he was pretty hungry but he never complained.

After he woke up they called us back because they could not get him to calm down. He has a hard time coming out of anesthesia, its almost like he is stuck in a night terror, so I was not surprised they called us back to help calm him down. The iPad seemed to do the trick.

The main source of irritation was the pH probe that went from his nose, down his esophagus, down to the opening of the stomach. It measured the amount of acid that was coming up.

Kayden had to keep the pH test in for 24 hours. He was a trooper, even when a piece of candy got stuck on the tubing and tugged on his nose every time he swallowed until it dissolved.
The tests showed that he did infact have acid coming pretty far up and that there was damaged from the acid. This acid reflux(that he had had since he was a baby and was ignored by his first doc despite my concern..) was the main cause of his food aversion and extremely sensitive gag reflex as well as the numerous episodes with croup.
His GI doc put him on an acid reducer. It's been 6 months and he has not had a case of croup or gagging. The best of all is he is adding new foods to his repertoire every week! 

A few weeks after starting his new medicine Kayden added carrots as his first new food. It was a happy day in our house!