The first week of 2014 and our first visit of the new year to London and GOSH for a consultation with M’s gastro team.  Mike and I had our list of queries drawn up and were determined not to leave without some answers.  Topping the list were our concerns as to why M has been struggling so much with chronic constipation since the beginning of last summer.  It seems that no sooner have we managed to get his system cleared out, than the problems start all over again and nobody seems able to explain why this is happening in such a relentless manner.  My meeting with the wonderful local Bowel and Bladder clinic had given us a proposed plan to follow and I was keen to see if GOSH would jump on board.

Courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

Another on-going worry has been the restricted diet and number of medicines that M is taking and is one that his consultant has shared, especially as he is still symptomatic, which is the worst of all worlds.  We work hard with M to keep him going and stick to the daily grind, but he shows more and more reluctance to do so and sometimes the battle is just a step too far for us all.  I was keen to know if there was any possibility that we could remove one or two of his 7 daily medicines as we had discussed at our last proper appointment back in May.

Despite his weight loss in October whilst admitted to GOSH, and a further loss during December, M has managed to gain some weight in the last 12 months and is still creeping along his centile line, which keeps the medics happy.  This visit’s registrar was pleased to see that he had gained in both height and weight, though he mentioned that he would be happier if M could gain a little more weight in the coming months; a difficult feat when your child eats little other than “thin air” as M himself describes it.  We discussed at length the experiences and the numerous phone-calls that I’ve made over the last 8 months.  He even agreed that the current situation is less than ideal and supported, in principle, our tentative query as to whether we could drop a medicine or 2.

Courtesy of newharmonywellness.com

BUT – and admit it, you could sense that was coming, couldn’t you? – we can’t lose a medicine just yet.  Due to M’s new symptoms, the constant bowel problems swinging between chronic constipation and incessant diarrhoea and the general ill-health he’s been dealing with since the summer, we instead have to introduce new medicines to see if we can get a handle on the situation.  We’ve now got 2 more to add to the daily regime:  Senokot, which is a stimulant laxative, to help resolve the constipation issue, and Lansoprazole, a PPI to deal with the reflux that we’ve only recently learned M has been living with.

The problem with new medicines is that we can’t stop any of the old ones until we see if there is any improvement in his condition.  If we see a change for the better, we need to be certain that it is the new medication that is helping, an issue that would quickly become muddied if we took out any old medicines alongside starting new ones.  So, for the next 3 months until our return visit to GOSH, M will be on 9 medicines daily and already he has proved himself to be a real little trooper in his approach to it all.  I don’t know that I would be so keen to take so much every day, especially when there are no obvious outward signs that anything is making everything better, but he remains positive and determined to beat this condition and not let it rule his life.

We do have one other thing to do over the next 8 weeks and this resulted from the follow-up conversation with M’s dietitian.  She felt that we needed to exclude a couple more foods from M’s diet to try and reduce his symptoms.  We agreed to tackle the 2 that he has complained about when suffering from reflux.  His description of them making his throat feel as if “…someone has a pin and is pricking my throat and running it down the length of it..” as he swallowed had sounded the alarm with me and the dietitian agreed.  So, for the next 8 weeks we are now experimenting with life without potatoes and raisins as well as the already excluded gluten, wheat, dairy, soya, egg and raspberries.  Fortunately, M almost always prefers to eat sweet potatoes to the humble spud and so I’m hopeful that, for the most-part, this won’t prove to be too difficult a challenge for us.

The visit to GOSH wasn’t quite as we’d hoped.  We’d gone with the dreams of reducing his medicines down to 5 or 6 and came back with the reality of 9 daily medicines and an even more restricted diet.  It’s hard to remain positive in the light of such a change, but we continue to strive towards a symptom-free M and will do whatever it takes to get him to that position.