A Long Overdue Update

Oliver has been corn-free for nearly ten months now. All the things I mentioned previously (sleeping better and eating better) are still happening, so although it's hard I am happy to have him off of corn! He has done really well with it, overall. We went all out and pulled all corn syrup and corn derivatives. Those things don't typically cause EoE reactions (because they supposedly have no proteins), yet it's not unheard of for a kid to not be able to tolerate them. We have kept dum-dums lollipops in his diet. They do have corn syrup, but are safe for a vast majority of EoE kids, even those with no other safe foods.

With regards to corn syrup, we had often wondered if he was reacting to ketchup. It's very likely seeing as every ketchup you'll ever find at a restaurant has corn syrup. Or it could have been the hot dog he always ate with the ketchup, who knows. But as we struggled to find a ketchup that would work (Hunt's unfortuntaly doesn't sell theirs anymore, but Kroger and Albertson's both have an organic store brand one), I recalled those times when I was wondering if the ketchup he was eating was making him sick.

From that point, we did something we maybe shouldn't have. We added a new food AND removed one food without checking things out via endoscopy in between. This means that should his next endoscopy show eosinophils, we won't know if the soy is a no go or perhaps the soy is safe and there is something else that he was eating all along that was the problem. Had we done the endoscopy after just removing corn, we would have known if he was "clear". Instead, we didn't go that route and just assumed that removing corn was going to give him clear (no eosinophils) biopsies from the endoscopy. Honestly, I thought that soy was going to be a huge fail and we'd no right away that it wasn't going to work, which was the main reason I agreed to the soy trial (it's what the doctors thought should be the next step). But, that didn't happen. He's been doing very well with the soy, actually. That doesn't mean things still don't look bad inside though! There's also the question of if he even knows what it's like to eat without pain, or if he's so used to stomach pain that it doesn't bother him anymore. Perhaps if you or I were feeling how he was we'd be visibly irritable to all around us, but Oliver may just be so used to it that it doesn't phase him. Who knows. Even if he is experiencing no pain, the eosinophils could still be wrecking havoc on his esophagus.

We will definitely be doing another endoscopy very soon. It's time to add another food, but we need to know for sure that it's okay to do so.

Endoscopy Results, Allergy Visit, and No More Corn

The post title pretty much says it all, but if you want some more details, read on..

Oliver had biopsies with 20+ eosinophils in them (others had just a few). 20+ is high enough to diagnose, so that's not really a good thing. However, the gastroenterologist was not concerned about this, because he saw it as an improvement (an improvement over his initial endoscopy, but not over his second one, I should have called him on that, but I didn't). Jordan and I aren't satisfied with these results, and crossed fingers and toes that the allergist (whom we had an appointment with just days after we received the results) wouldn't be satisfied either.

Our allergist seems to know his stuff, but he's very much a man of few words. He looked over the results and then suggested skin prick tests. The skin tests showed a positive reaction to corn. So we pulled corn from his diet. This has proved to be a tricky one because it involves removing foods that have always been safe for him, but he's doing quite well with it. Probably because he's still very much in a "out of sight, out of mind" stage, so if we don't have it (or it is hidden out of view), he does very well when I say "we don't have any of that". I have explained to him that he can't have corn anymore,  but he just started telling me that things don't have corn in them, so I've found telling him we don't have something (and tossing a few things so that can be true) works best.

Almost immediately he started sleeping better. It seemed too quick to be linked, but it's hard to know for sure. He's been sleeping very poorly for the past two months or so, and it was so nice to be able to go the entire night without him waking up and crying! After a few days, his appetite also improved. He's been consistently eating well for the past five days or so. Though his weight gain has been okay, I've still been very worried about his lack of eating (and drinking his formula) over the past very long time, so it's nice to seem him eating! Again, pretty quick changes, so it's hard to know if it's connected to the corn removal or just a fluke.

We'll follow up with his allergist in six weeks and go from there.

Back to Not Sleeping Well

Oliver has not been sleeping well at night lately. EoE reactions are often delayed, but I have no idea how long. I wonder if it has anything to do with the cheez-its from two weeks ago, or perhaps the cupcake he may or may not have got from an older brother last Wednesday. Yikes! Usually I'm very good at making sure he doesn't have anything he shouldn't. No so much lately, I guess.