The results are in...

Hi all... well.... we got the results back from Ben's Austin procedure- the pill camera, endoscopy, colonoscopy, and biopsy. The biopsy showed some inflammation, somewhat abnormal, but nothing major. The pill camera, however, showed an entirely different story. It showed evidence of erosions, lesions, and ulcerations. Very small, mind you, like millimeter in size, but certainly there. There was also evidence of early Crohns Disease. This does not mean he will have Crohns disease later, but it is a possibility at this point. For now, he has been diagnosed with "Autistic Enteritis"- a bowel condition common in the autistic population. SO the treatment now is medication. He started on Pentasa, which he has been taking for a week now. Thank GOD we haven't seen any major side effects, so he seems to be tolerating it pretty well. He will take this 3X daily with food indefinately right now. He will also have to be scoped again at the end of 2008.
Fun stuff... We are fighting our insurance company on denial of payment for the pill camera portion- they still consider it experimental. Well... if we wouldn't have done this, we wouldn't have seen the source of Ben's problems! The pill camera can go in places that the scopes cannot. Yet another frustrating thing in the day in the life of the world of autism! Just think of those families that need the pill camera but cannot afford it and are not finding the source of their child's problem- and their child cannot tell them what hurts or what's bothering them. For that matter, insurance does not cover about 75% of Ben's treatments. I recently heard about something called Nick's Law here in OK, where they are trying to get a bill passed mandating insurance start covering autism related expenses. I mean it's in everyone's best interest, if we can't start helping these kids NOW, taxpayers will be paying for these autistic adults for the rest of their lives. hmmm....
OK, I'll get off my soap box now.

The good news is that we've taken Ben off of his Vitamin B12 injections because we've felt like it's been hindering his potty training. Every time he pulls his pants down he thinks he's getting a shot. The anxiety is traumatizing. SO we decided to stop and see what happened. It's been over a week now and we haven't noticed much difference. YAY!