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Caroline's stomach pain continued to worsen over the last few days despite being prescribed a new medication to "coat" her tummy. Yesterday she was in a lot of pain and crying with nearly every bottle and even in between feedings. Her pediatrician and Dr. Prose felt it necessary for her to be seen today by the pediatric gastroenterologist at Duke to get another opinion about what might be going on. Dr. Ulshen (peds GI) is not convinced that her problems are necessarily due to the steroids. They very well might be, but in his years of experience treating kids with steroids he has not had a child develop stomach issues as serious as Caroline's (Dr. Prose has said the same thing). It could be that she has something else going on that would have developed anyway and just coincidentally occurred the same time the steroids were started. The only way to know for sure is to perform some tests- an endoscopy and upper GI x-ray. The endoscopy would require her to receive anesthesia and be put to sleep while Dr. Ulshen looked down her throat and into her stomach. However, because the new medication may take a few days to really take full affect, we're going to wait to see if she improves over the next day or so before putting her through any testing. Dr. Prose is also willing to stop the steroid for a while and just monitor her hemangioma for growth to see if this improves her tummy troubles. If so, we would know that they were due to the steroids. So, for the next couple of days, we will just see how she does. If she doesn't improve, she will probably have the testing done sometime next week. Please keep Caroline in your prayers that her stomach would heal on it's own, the new medication would begin to work, and the testing won't be necessary.