Food Trials

Food, we all need it to survive. But what happens when, for whatever reason,  you can't eat or eat enough? For some it means a feeding tube. What happens when you are a 4 year old who  likes food and desperately wants to eat but can't? This is where we are at with Deklin. He misses eating, he wants to eat, he doesn't seen to care anymore if it makes him sick or not. He just wants to eat. In January we started food trials again with him and he is enjoying that. We have a growing list of both fails and passes. Food trials are hard because a "fail" can manifest itself in a few ways. Sometimes it's obvious like vomiting or bad stomach aches, other times though it isn't as obvious. Sometimes it's more behavioral, how do you figure out what is normal 4 year old moodiness and what is a food reaction? Other times (like now) its a rash that comes on more than a week after the last "new" food was introduced. The rash is hard because some things for Deklin like wheat are fine initially, but react after eating it a few times in a row. He has also been refluxing a lot again, so not sure if he is having a mild reaction to one of the new foods, or if he just refluxes anytime there is anything in his stomach. One other issue is some days his stomach works better than others, and on the bad days he wont tolerate anything in his stomach, allergy or not. There is also the issue of him getting excited over a food (bananas) that ends up being a fail. As frustrating as this process can be, I am just thrilled to be taking this step forward. Deklin is also very happy about being able to eat again.

Deklin's doctor and I have talked about blending food and putting it through his tube for food trials with the hope of eventually moving toward a full blended diet if possible. This will allow me to trial a food without having him eat it. This way if it does fail I don't have to give him something that he is excited about just to take it away. Now every food I give him to eat orally will be something we know already passed. Also as he gets more okay foods we can supplement some of his commercial formula with real food. The problem was that to put food through his tube the food needs to be fully blended into a thin liquid consistency so it wont clog his tube and I don't have a blender good enough to do this, and they are expensive to buy new. We have however recently had a wonderful company step in and help us make this process a little easier by providing us with the blender necessary to do all of this. (go to you tube and type in "will it blend" this blender should do the trick)   I am so so thankful for the generosity.



Deklin has GI and Pulmonology appointments coming up as well as an MRI so I will do an appointment update soon.