Aidan Sweat Chloride Test

About a month ago Aidan started having little facial tics that included rapid eye blinking and uncontrollable muscle movement in his face.  We took him to the dr to figure out what was going on.  Turns out that he had a strep infection and the facial tic episodes were caused by something called PANS (aka PANDAS) which is like an autoimmune response to a strep throat infection he had.  It's pretty rare but the pediatric neurologist felt very confident that this is what was causing this.  Interestingly enough as soon as he finished his round of antibiotics the episodes stopped and we haven't seen one since.  Big sigh of relief.

While we were trying to figure out what was causing all of this the doctors discovered another issue.  They did a full panel blood test and found that Aidan's liver enzymes AST and ALT were through the roof.  Over 2x the normal range for a child his age!  They sent him for an ultrasound of his liver right away and it came back unremarkable.  The next step was to schedule an appointment with a pediatric gastroenterologist at the Liver Care Center at Children's Mercy.  We had that appointment on Monday, June 3. While going over Aidan's history we realized that things that we considered normal for Aidan are actually not really all that normal.  His stomach is all out of whack.  The Gastro specialist felt like a battery of test was needed to rule out some of the scarier diagnosis and maybe help narrow down what's really going on in that little body of his.  At this point we've had bloodwork and more bloodwork, stool samples, urine samples, and a Sweat Chloride Test.  

The Sweat Chloride Test is a test that checks for chloride content of the sweat to diagnosis Cystic Fibrosis.  These little electrodes are placed on each arm for 5 minutes to "activate" the skin.  After 5 minutes the electrodes are removed and a special gauze is placed over the site.  This is covered with bandages and then we waited for 30 minutes while the gauze presumably collects the sweat.  The bandages and gauze were removed, placed in a vial and we were free to go home.  I guess it doesn't really hurt but toward the end Aidan was tearing at the   bandages to get them off.  All in all he did really wonderful.  He is a super patient!  Every nurse and doctor he has worked with so far has said that he is the best patient because he is so compliant. Hopefully, we'll get results next week.  We have a CAT Scan with contrast scheduled for this morning and hopefully that should be it for tests for this week.  We'll keep you posted! 

Sweat Test

Electrodes on the right arm

Waiting patiently for 30 minutes for the test to be over