Allergic Asher

A year ago, I posted that Asher was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis. That's a fancy word to say that he has a food allergy.

When he was first diagnosed, the Dr. gave him a prescription for Flovent and sent us on our merry way....

The Flovent has worked great. Asher stopped vomiting and started eating solids almost immediately. We're truly thankful for that. And we haven't had to worry about his allergies while we worked to fix Simi's heart or prepared for Leila's arrival. That was nice.

But during this past year, Asher has gradually began to struggle with eating again. So much so, that we started investigating how to deal with his food allergies.

Our most recent stop was to see the head of the department of pediatric allergy at Duke. Since he has food allergies, we thought it best to get the advise of a pediatric allergist. We couldn't have been more wrong. This doctor, after keeping us waiting for three hours, told us not to restrict his diet/avoid any food which may trigger his allergy. Instead, he said, just keep taking the Flovent and not worry about it. Truthfully, he made me feel like a terrible mum for restricting my child's diet.

When I asked about skin testing to determine the offending foods, the doctor said it wouldn't be helpful. He did agree to do blood tests, though. The blood tests revealed a mild allergy to wheat. Doctor told us not to restrict wheat from Asher's diet.

We followed his advice. Asher was thrilled. He started eating yogurt and things with wheat and things with soy. And within two weeks, he started vomiting. Then, he stopped eating completely.

After doing a bit of investigating, I learned that this doctor gave lousy advise.

We also visited our pediatric gastroenterologist, who told us that kids with EE don't usually grow out of it, and that he'll probably need to take the steroids forever. Hmmnn..

So...off we go in a quest to find more help. I'll chronicle our adventure, in the hopes that it may help someone else. Right now we're awaiting an appointment at the Eosinophilc Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Yes, indeed, there really is a place like this. We're told that our appointment will probably be in August or September. They only take 3 new families a week and that's when the next appointment will be available.

In the meantime, we've gone back to restricting Asher's diet and he's back to eating again. Phew!

Mothers do know best. We may not have the medical degree, but we know our children.