I wanted to share the story of my son's ongoing illness, I'm not sure if it will help or not but for my own peace of mind I would like others to know.

First a little background. My name is Shannan and my husband is Jeff, together we have 2 wonderful children. My daughter Taylor is now 8 and my son Trace is now 4, we also have guardianship of my 15 year old sister.

We moved to Mississippi wanting to raise our kids in a better place. We're from Houston and didn't want the kids growing up in a fast paced lifestyle. Hubby and I fell in love with a historic home and before we knew it he had quit his job and we were living here in Mississippi. Life is good here. We started a company and are able to work from the house, we're enjoying every second of working on this old home, the kids have land to run about on, trees to climb and clouds to lay under and watch pass.

School starts in early Aug out here so the beginning of Aug was very hectic for us. My daughter was as usual easy with her clothes shopping but of course we couldn't get so lucky with the teenager. We had planned to spend the Friday before school shopping, we knew it would be an all day ordeal. That was Aug. 8th 2003.

The morning of Aug 8th we woke early, grabbed pop tarts and wentnt shopping, knowing what the day had in store for us (if you've ever shopped with a 15yr old you know what I mean!). As we expected she had to try on every outfit and everything made her either look fat, made her butt look huge or made her look like she had no rear at all... it was brutal. After several hours of this we needed a break... and stopped for lunch.

We had a nice lunch full of fun, jokes, laughter and even a few chunks of food tossed across the table. After eating, again the shopping continued and by the time we crawled back into our home that night we were thoroughly exhausted. The kids took their showers and we tucked them into bed as always.

Saturday afternoon Trace started having diarrhea, at first we didn't think very much of it... maybe a tummy bug, but no cause for concern. It went on throughout the day and by nightfall was becoming more frequent, he was also having cramps but again we thought it was a bug. Trace spent the night in bed with me, the usual place of privilege for the kids when they don't feel well... staying up late with Mom watching cartoons and snuggling always makes things better.

By Sunday the diarrhea was still going and his cramping was getting much worse, he had at this point become hard to wake (he was wore out) and was having a hard time getting to the bathroom in time. We moved a bed into the hallway in front of the bathroom for him and started calling the nurses, around 1 that afternoon he passed his first bloody stool.

My husband was taking the bathroom shift when Trace passed the blood. I rushed him to the ER, making record time! While he was in the ER he had 2 more bloody bouts and even with the scene I threw, the ER physician refused to do a stool sample or even look in the toilet at what was being passed. The ER nurse was concerned and got a container to get a stool sample, as soon as the Doctor saw what he had done he sent him away and basically told me I was over reacting and that Trace had a gastrointestinal bacteria that would pass.

Mom instincts told me not to leave but I thought maybe I was over reacting after all... maybe this was a bug that would pass. I took my son home and watched as the bloody diarrhea got worse, the cramps were so bad my son was falling off the toilet leaving the white bathroom looking like a murder scene. After a long night of this I started calling the ER again at 4am trying to get them to pull some strings with the pediatric physician and have my son seen quickly... at 11am on Monday Aug 11th we saw the pediatric physician taking a stool sample with us. We had never seen this pediatric physician before, I thank God everyday for this man... he took one look at the stool sample and we were sent back over to the hospital for a barium enema. The BE showed intussusception which is when one part of the intestines telescopes into another part basically digesting itself in the process, at that point surgery was the only option. Being in a small town, I was not happy about the surgery being done at this hospital and asked for my son to be transported to a larger children's hospital. Sadly there was no time and the emergency surgery took place there. Again I thank God for our pediatric physician who stayed with my little boy throughout, we also had a wonderful surgeon.

On our 3rd day post surgery, we were told the intussusception was caused by Salmonella Typhi. We also were told that had he been seen earlier surgery could've been avoided (the 2 surgeons who told us this were not aware he had in fact been seen earlier). My son spent his 4th birthday with a 4 inch surgery wound going up his little tummy. The surgery took place on the first day of school.

Trace still has not recovered fully. He has problems controlling his bowels and has been diagnosed with posy-infectious IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome.) He also has headaches and seems to get sick if someone even looks at him funny. Just this morning he was back at the Dr.'s with a horrible headache, cold symptoms and a small amount of blood being found on toilet tissue. The Dr.'s have him on an anti-spasmodic trying to help his stomach cramps but they're doing very little good and they do nothing for the problems with bowel control. We see the pediatric GI physician again next month for a check up and hopefully he can tell me why my little boy who has never had a sick day in his life now catches every cold and virus around.

As of today this is the up to date on what Salmonella Typhi has done to my sweet little boy, it just doesn't seem to end.

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