6. Testing
Of course, they ran blood tests first of all.
I didn’t have a picture of how seriously jaundiced Little Lion was, or how sick he was until we got the results back.
There are different rating scales to read bilirubin (the stuff in our blood that the liver and bile ducts are supposed to filter out). There is conjugated and unconjugated bilirubin.
The hospital explained it to me like this: their estimated ‘normal’ bilirubin level for a baby of his age was 20.
Little Lion’s was over 500.
They said it was “hyper-conjugated bilirubinemia”. But that’s just the name of the symptom, it doesn’t give a diagnosis for the cause: a disease? a failing liver? severe hepatitis? tumor? milk intolerance? hormonal disorder?
I was told there were at least 100 causes for hyper-conjugated bilirubinemia, and they needed to go through them one by one to find the reason.
Except, problem: blood tests.
We soon were told one of the reasons WHY it was so hard to get Little Lion’s blood is because he was anemic, and he had a blood transfusion a few days later.
He definitely looked better, still ill, still weak, but so much stronger after the blood transfusion.
Some tests could not be run because of the blood transfusion, but the doctors assured me they would continue running all the tests they could to find an answer.
Even after the blood transfusion, getting blood to run tests still remained a problem. Every day, morning and evening someone would come and try to get blood. To see if his red blood cell count was okay, to see his liver function levels – and then extra to run more tests towards a diagnosis.
It was excruciating, watching as the experts tried to get blood, unsuccessfully. It seemed like such torture because they weren’t getting enough to run tests and Little Lion was not improving and they just kept poking his little arms, and feet, and even his head with needles.
As a last resort, we agreed to have a line put through his jugular vein in order to get enough blood to run important tests.
He was going into day surgery, and would be put under anesthesia.
If you want to make time stand still for a parent, send their infant into surgery.
I gasped half-breaths for the full 2 hours I sat in the waiting room. Exactly remembering how his eyes looked as the anesthesia made him fall asleep. Staring at the clock on the wall, but not registering the time it was reading.
I didn’t relax my shoulders or fully exhale until the nurse called me softly and, seeing the anxiety across my face, said “He’s okay.”
When we received Little Lion’s final diagnosis weeks later, we were told part of his condition is a lack of cortisol/stress hormone.
It is incredibly dangerous for him to go under anesthesia without a significant dose of cortisol.
Little Lion is lucky to be alive.
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