The Raw Side of Rare: Hope, Hustle & Rowdie’s Hospital Halls. Unfiltered Mom Life, Medical Edition

When you become a parent, you expect scraped knees and colds — not endless questions without answers. But when your two-year-old starts clutching her stomach after eating, saying, “My tummy hurts,” you know something isn’t right.

That’s how it began with Rowdie. Just two years old and already in pain every time she ate. At first, it seemed like toddler pickiness — until it wasn’t. She would nibble, take a few bites, and then stop. Meals became battles, not because she didn’t want to eat, but because she couldn’t.

Why does her stomach hurt so much when she eats?
Why does she throw up afterward?
Why does she refuse food when she’s clearly hungry?
And why is she so much smaller than the other kids her age?

The doctors noted she was at the very bottom of the weight chart. “Just let her eat more,” they’d say. But what if she can’t eat more? What if eating is what’s making her sick?

We’ve seen countless doctors — pediatricians, GI specialists, and every referral imaginable. Test after test, scan after scan. Yet every result came back “normal.” No clear diagnosis. No clear path forward. Just more questions.

So we live in this space between what’s seen and what’s invisible. Between what’s “normal” on paper and what’s not normal in daily life. Between reassurance and frustration.

Over time, Rowdie has learned to live with her pain — something no child should ever have to do. She thinks it’s normal for her stomach to hurt. She’s used to it. And that’s the part that breaks my heart the most.

How did we get here?
We got here through years of unanswered questions, through persistence and prayer, through refusing to stop asking why. Because invisible doesn’t mean imaginary. And no child should have to live in pain just because their illness doesn’t show up on a test result.

This is our story — not for sympathy, but for awareness. Because somewhere, another parent is watching their little one push away food, wondering the same questions we did.

And maybe, by sharing Rowdie’s story, we can help make the invisible a little more seen.