21 Nov Update
Keegan did well throughout his procedures today, and we may have a glimmer of hope for an answer finally! First, they repeated his upper endoscopy. They noted some flattening of the villa in the stomach that help digest the food, which can be helped as he starts tolerating a greater volume of food. During the endoscopy, they did a pancreatic stimulation test. When we eat, the brain releases a hormone called CCK to stimulate bile production in the pancreas. In the stimulation test, they give a dose of CCK that should keep the pancreas producing bile for about 30 minutes; then they take samples of the bile after 10 minutes and 20 minutes for testing enzymatic levels. At 10 minutes, Keegan only produced a small amount of bile. At 20 minutes, there was no bile at all. The doctor said they can’t say anything definitively until the lab comes back with numbers on his levels, but he was fairly confident Keegan’s pancreas is not working sufficiently. This would explain a lot of his GI issues. Next, we have to find out why his pancreas doesn’t work, but he could still start enzyme replacement therapy in the meantime. Then, they did the colonoscopy and found several lesions in his rectal cavity which are probably the source of Keegan’s bleeding. These were biopsied and cultured to see if they are just irritations or something else. Lastly, they did the bone marrow aspiration. They were not able to take enough bone marrow to run all the tests, but they got enough to run the more important ones. They were afraid to take too much with his counts being rather low. They were not able to get an sample of the actual bone because he was too small. We should have a preliminary read on the bone marrow tomorrow. Keegan’s in a good mood, but his stomach is cramping terribly right now. He’s been doing on his hands and knees for almost two hours now. The nurse said you can here his stomach cramping when you listen to it with a stethoscope. They are going to start Keegan on an antispasmodic drug that will help keep him from cramping up too much. The transplant team is watching Keegan’s heart carefully. His heart rate has been elevated for awhile, and his blood pressure has remained high or in the upper range of normal. His transplant doctor said they will not do anything unless it stays high without coming back to normal every now and then. We Thank you very much for your prayers throughout this time. We are so thankful for even the small possibility of an answer today. We’ve said it time and again, but we know that God has sent his strongest angels to watch over Keegan and help him get through these times. We still have quite a way to go to get Keegan well again, but we are hopeful that he will come through this even stronger than before. Thank you again for your love, support, and prayers. We can never thank you enough.