Welcome to my blog!

This blog is a journal of our struggles with food allergies and eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases (EGIDs). ("DD" stands for "dear daughter", so whenever you see it in the blog it is referring to my daughter and our personal experience.) My hope is for this blog to be a source of information and support to others who might be trying to investigate, diagnose, treat, or live with, food allergies and EGIDs. Feel free to leave comments with suggestions or requests of what you would like to see on this blog. This is a work in progress. :)




Month 16

January 2009

Things are really going well this month. I feel like I'm finally starting to find some of the pieces to this crazy puzzle.

Some time since my last post, we took DD in for a homeopathic appointment, in hopes of finding her constitutional remedy. The homeopath gave her a remedy that day. Over the next 2 weeks, weird eczema spots began appearing in places that she's never had eczema before. They finally faded. I can only assume that it was from the remedy, but I'm not sure if it's a good sign that we've found the constitutional or not. We have a followup appointment in a couple weeks.

BUT- I am confident that between the CST, the tongue tie clipping, and the homeopathy, SOMETHING is happening!! DD gained more than a pound in the past month, which is more than she's gained in the previous 4 months total. She was just about to fall off the growth charts, and now we're back up to the 10th percentile!! Yay!

We're still having hit or miss food trials though. We trialed rice and it failed. We just finished a sweet potato trial, and it was also a fail (although it was a very mild reaction, so maybe they can go into a rotation diet.)

We had bloodwork done last week, and everything came back good (which is a relief, because that means that her gut is at least healed enough to be absorbing nutrients), EXCEPT her vitamin D. I kind of figured, since we're in the northern hemisphere, Pacific Northwest... not much sunshine during the winter months. But her level was really low- 11 (norm is 40-50+), so I'm on a frantic search for a vitamin D supplement that doesn't have any allergens. I'm hoping for a liquid so that I don't have to take 10 pills a day, but so far I've only found them with coconut oil, sesame oil, or olive oil- none of which DD can have. :(

But overall, things are looking good! I'm trying to keep optimistic that they will continue that way.

**End of the month update: All of our food trials are failing. Banana failed as well. And now the ONE packaged (junk) food that I thought was safe for us (Enjoy Life chocolate chips) is causing a reaction. :(

I ended up ordering Pure Encapsulations vitamin D- 5,000 IU capsules. I emailed the company and found out that both the filler and the capsule are both made from pine fiber. And they passed the trial!! I'm taking one pill every day, as well as going out for a walk in the sunshine (when we have it), so hopefully when I get my levels rechecked in a couple months my D will be higher. Oh, I forgot to say that I had mine tested too and I was at 20. So if the sunshine and supplement raise my levels, I can be confident that it will raise DD's as well since she's still breastfeeding.

1 comment:

Alicia said...

The below cod liver oil may be out for ytou, thought I'd post it anyway:

http://www.building-health.com/blue-ice%C3%82%E2%84%A2-premium-high-vitamin-cod-liver-oil-120-nongel-caps-p-13.html