Tag Archives: Conditions and Diseases

The psychiatrist’s couch

The thing about blogging is that, as well as sharing our experiences with others and maybe helping those who are facing similar journeys, it has become a form of cheap therapy for me. I can pour my heart out into my words, delete those that needed to be said, but not shared and publish the rest for the world to see and comment on. For those of you who know me well, you will understand that I’m not very good at sharing when I’m struggling with life, even to my nearest and dearest, and yet I can express my emotions through a few deft strokes on the keyboard almost without pause.

My Mum, who I know will be reading this and rolling her eyes (and yes, the phone-call will come later), frequently says she doesn’t understand the need to share everything with the world at large which so many of us do these days, be it through blogging or social media such as Facebook or Twitter. Is there an easy or obvious answer to that why? I can’t comment on why others share the most intimate details of their mundane lives, but I know why I do it. I have a story to tell and life experiences to share. When I started my blog I couldn’t anticipate how many people would read and follow my musings, but as I approach the 2,000th view of my blog, I am flattered that people have read something that has resonated with them. I know that some posts will be far more therapeutic for me than interesting for you, my reader, and I thank you that you’re prepared to bear with me and keep on reading.

The rest of today’s post is very much in that vein as life with M is proving difficult right now and I need to lie down and share from the psychiatrist’s couch.

Since M’s relapse back in April, we have been waiting for his system to settle and for things to improve and return us to where we had been at the start of the year. Our GOSH appointment in May had reassured us that his gut would repair and they spoke positively about the possibility of trialling one of his forbidden foods and even reducing his medication over the next 6 months.

Unfortunately, life hasn’t turned out that way and instead we are caught in a downward spiral and seem to be sinking fast. Our weekend at Legoland was a real step back to where we had been and much nearer the beginning of our journey then we were happy to be. As well as the return of multiple soiling accidents with chronic diarrhoea, M has suffered from stomach cramps, overwhelming tiredness, fluctuating appetite and blood in his stools. He is obviously struggling with his emotions and frustrations and is just generally out-of-sorts.

My conversation with our ever-wonderful dietician last week confirmed my inclination to speak to M’s gastro team as we really need to get him back on track. I was worried that we would be asked to remove something further from his already restricted diet, but the registrar told me that that wasn’t the way forward right now. Instead, we are introducing another medicine into the mix to try and suppress the reactions he’s experiencing and are being sent to our local hospital for an abdominal x-ray.

There are no easy answers to this problem for the time being. We don’t know why his small body has gone back into hyper-drive in response to the food allergies and we are feeling helpless in our inability to regain some semblance of control. If the x-ray is clear, which we’re expecting it to be, then the next logical step is another set of scopes, but that isn’t an easy decision to make because of M’s problems with anaesthetic. We also know that we still haven’t removed the possibility of moving M to the elemental diet from the table either and that seems like a daunting prospect.

The one thing I have learned from the wonderful families we met through FABED is that we’re not on our own and that however hard the next step might seem to us, there will be somebody else out there who has walked that path before us and will hold our hands along the way.

What’s more, a cup of tea or coffee and a chance to escape the EGID world, even for half an hour, is great therapy too.

Fabulous FABED!

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We have once again enjoyed a busy weekend. Thanks to the wonderful organisational skills of the dedicated group of parents who set up FABED back in 2005 to support parents and families of children with EGID, we enjoyed an amazing weekend at Legoland Windsor.

What made this weekend so special was that it was organised with our EGID children in mind. A full day to meet other families who are carrying the same load as us and who know how it feels to be fighting a never-ending daily battle that most of our friends just can’t comprehend. An opportunity for M to meet children who are just like him, suffer from the same condition and have to live with multiple food-allergies to a greater or lesser extent. A chance for G to meet others whose siblings are constantly in hospital, or making hospital visits and who are often the focus of so much attention.

We met bright and early on Saturday morning and were delighted to see that there were in the region of 40 families there, all of whom had at least 1 child with EGID, though we got to know one family where all 4 children were affected to some degree. This was our first FABED event, but were instantly made to feel welcome and amongst friends. We recognised some familiar faces from the Allergy Show a couple of weeks ago and both M and G instantly made some new friends.

Unfortunately M suffered a bad day, but we had the advantage of being able to seek refuge in the suite at the amazing Legoland Hotel. There was a dedicated medical room to provide privacy for those who needed it for feeding or medical purposes. The Suite itself had tea and coffee-making facilities for the parents and a play area filled with Lego for the children to enjoy. We took an hour and a half out of the day to give M some much needed downtime and the children enjoyed attempting to build the biggest tower possible with some of their new friends.

The evening showed just how much hard work and thought had gone into making this an unparalleled get-together. A buffet dinner was provided for the FABED families, with full details of all ingredients used to prepare the dishes and options available to cater for even the most difficult of diets. Those children unable to eat were able to spend time in the play area, which was next door but out of sight of the food. M was delighted to be able to choose from such a wide selection of foods and we were reassured that we knew what each dish contained and what he could and couldn’t eat.

As soon as we heard about this day out, we knew we’d be going along. It would have taken something extreme to keep us away. M feels so alone in his allergy world that the opportunity to show that he really isn’t on his own and to allow him to chat and get to know other EGID sufferers was one that we couldn’t turn down. He made particular friends with young R, who is a year older, but feels the same emotions and frustrations as M. They were able to have an honest chat and M values this new friend who is “just like me Mummy, but he can eat even less, sometimes has to be tube fed and has accidents too.” R’s big sister, F, was a great source of comfort to G also as they share the same experiences of a younger brother with EGID as well as struggling with their own food allergies.

I also got to meet the delightful mumannie123, who writes the blog, Food for Thought: Boweled over by food allergies, recipes and advice. We have got to know each other a little over the last couple of weeks through our respective blogs, so it was wonderful to finally put a face to the name and spend some real time chatting. We have discovered that we live in the same part of the world, so I’m looking forward to perhaps being able to meet in person as time allows, as there is nothing quite like having a friend who understands what you’re going through from firsthand experience.

We made the decision to make a weekend of it and stayed the night at the Hotel in an Adventurers Room. The lego models and details in these rooms are astounding:

This weekend has been a truly fabulous weekend and my heartfelt thanks go out to FABED and Legoland Windsor for accommodating such a complex range of needs and ensuring that so many families were able to enjoy as normal a day out as possible when dealing with illness. To this family, at very least, it has made a huge difference and has given us a great resource for support for this journey that we now know we are not travelling on our own.

Exhausted!

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It’s been a long, exhausting, but fantastic weekend. We’ve got so much more from this weekend than we had expected or even hoped we might.

Saturday was a busy day at the Allergy and Free from Show and I really wish we’d had the 2 day visit we’d originally planned. Just to give you an idea, the photo below is a small part of the hoard of M-friendly goodies we came back with:

We managed to pick up some of our family favourites at “show” prices, which meant that lots of the products were at half price or less, but also found some new things too, which were either new to the market by some familiar names or simply new products to us. Amongst the new treats we discovered were

Bfree Gluten and wheat free tortilla wraps – perfect for M and G’s lunchboxes
Gluten, wheat and egg free spaghetti – the manufacturer assures me it won’t go sticky during cooking like so many other brands do. This is one that we’ll have to try and see
MozzaRisella – a mozzarella-type cheese made from rice and containing no dairy or soya
KoKo Strawberry flavoured coconut milk – not just a new flavour, but now also available as a pack of 3 250ml cartons, perfect for a treat on a day trip

We found that all the stall holders were knowledgeable, informed and friendly. Nothing was too much trouble for them and they all took their time to talk with not only Mike and me, but M and G also. We were also lucky enough to meet the wonderful folks of both Fabed and Parentsown and discovered them to be even more delightful and helpful than they are on their respective web forums. Finally, the children were collared by well-known TV weather girl, Sian Lloyd who had her very own weather map on hand to show the pollen count and problems experienced by hayfever sufferers in the UK. She spent a long time teaching both G and M how to present the weather, had photos taken with them and chatted to us about M’s condition and why we were visiting the show.

My round-up of the show has to be M’s quote on whether he enjoyed our visit:

“It’s the best show we’ve ever been to, Mummy. Can we come again?”

Sunday was another great day, although the sunshine we had been hoping for didn’t materialise and the morning was overcast and grey. We made our way across London and eventually reached Battersea Park to join around 3,996 other people in the 5K RBC Race for the Kids raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital. It may have been a less than sun-filled day, but the number of people taking part was amazing to see and I can’t wait to hear the final figure for the amount of money raised. We didn’t rush to get to the start early after a late night at Matilda on Saturday – and before I forget, I highly recommend a visit to the Cambridge Theatre to see this awesome show – but we felt the camaraderie and excitement of the walk nevertheless. As requested by M and G, we had taken along the scooters and they happily led our way as Mike and I followed, alternating between a walk and a gentle jog.

We had some highs and lows along the way with M as expected as he took the occasional tumble from his scooter (we’re still working on the balance issue as he struggles because of the dyspraxia) and minor tantrums as it appeared that G might beat him across the finish line. However, finish it we did and we collected our medals and goodie bags, completed a quick tour of the entertainment provided for those who took part and even fitted in a play at the fantastic park in Battersea, before heading back across London for lunch and our train back home.

I’m still waiting for a final couple of donations to be made before I can update you on our personal family fundraising total, but, for the interim, here’s a photo of M in his race t-shirt, RBC lion and medal.

The importance of doing research

The final answer?

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Having taken a week’s hiatus from the story of our journey to a diagnosis to blog about our week on M’s diet, I wanted to just go back a few months and finish the story of getting to where we are today.

In September 2012, we had now reached what appeared to be a status quo for M, which though still not ideal, was vastly improved from the position we’d been in less that 18 months earlier. He was taking 5 lots of different medicines during the day to cope with his symptoms – 2 anti-histamines, 1 calcium supplement, 1 probiotic and the protein shake – and was still dairy, egg, wheat and soya free in his diet.

We survived day trips, weekends away and even a two week holiday to Canada to visit Mike’s family and had come through them all relatively unscathed. M was growing taller by the day, though his weight continued to be a concern. We only suffered with a couple of bouts of croup and the household coughs and colds didn’t appear to have any ill-effect on him. There was the occasional, inadvertent slip-up with his food and we all suffered the consequences of those, but we quickly identified what had caused the problem and realised that, for the time being at very least, M would need to continue on his strict diet.

Christmas 2012 came and went as did G’s birthday and both occasions were celebrated with M-friendly food. 2012 had been a tough year for us all for very many reasons and it was good to finally see it leave and be able to look forward to a brighter 2013.

The beginning of January 2013 saw us returning to GOSH for an appointment with M’s consultant. This time round we were able to make it a family trip as the children had yet to return to school and so all 4 of us spent 2 days in the Capital. Mike and I were determined to get some answers this time round. We felt that whilst we had made huge progress with M, we still weren’t in a place that was ideal for any concerned. We didn’t know what we could expect, but we were desperate for a diagnosis and a clear plan in place for the foreseeable future.

The appointment started in usual fashion with a quick overview from our standpoint of how things were going since we had last been there. I had spoken to Dr Hill in the run up to Christmas and she was concerned by the continued frequency of M’s soiling accidents. I was able to report that little had changed since my conversation with her and so she suggested that we took the step of taking gluten out of M’s diet too. At this point, Mike lost it a little and expressed just how frustrated we all were with the lack of knowledge we had about what was wrong with M. We both felt that they were continuing to limit his safe foods without having a good reason for doing so.

She looked at us amazed and asked what exactly he meant. To cut a long story short, it turns out that there had, in fact, been a diagnosis in place since the previous April, but not one of the gastro team we had seen during the past 9 months had thought to advise us of it. I’m sure that many of you would imagine us to be fuming at this apparent incompetence, but, to be perfectly honest, both Mike and I were just extremely grateful that we now had a name to put to M’s condition.

The diagnosis was EGID – Eosinophilic Gastro-Intestinal Disease – a relatively rare and fairly recently identified family of gastric diseases, which fall into the bigger category of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. There is no need for me to bore you with the finer details (you can read a much better explanation here anyway), but it is an auto-immune condition that sees the eosinophils, which are a part of the white blood cells, attacking the body itself instead of the allergen.

For those among you with the better memories, this is indeed the exact condition I had tentatively self-diagnosed during 2012 (see here) and so, for me, this diagnosis was something I already knew a lot about and knew we could manage. I had sourced some fabulous support groups and had already joined them in the belief that this was the road we were destined to be travelling. We now felt empowered and able to take this diagnosis and run with it. The Dietetics team agreed to write a letter to M’s school explaining his condition and the impact it could have on him, which we hoped would enable some support and understanding that had previously been lacking.

We could also now educate both M and G about his condition. You could palpably sense the relief that M had simply by being able to put a name to his condition and he has a reasonable understanding of what’s going on in his body. It doesn’t make it any easier when you trying to explain to the 7 year old why he can’t eat a particular item, but he has grasped the reasons for the reactions his body is experiencing and is learning to accept the current limitations.

We also learned that we were in the best possible place to receive care for a child with EGID. GOSH is a leading light in the research world for understanding more about this family of diseases and is considered to most certainly be on par with the US in terms of their research. This was never going to be something M could outgrow, despite the reassurances of our local hospitals, but we could and would learn to live with it and to make the best of a difficult situation.

It’s the little things

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That can cause the biggest problems, as we learned to our dismay last May. Following our previous GOSH appointment, life had been ticking along quite nicely. We still hadn’t achieved an “accident-free” life for M, but things were improving and he no longer had soiling issues on a daily basis. We hadn’t got a confirmed diagnosis, but we seemed to have reached a reasonable status quo and had hope that things could and would continue to improve.

M was happily taking his medicines daily and we had conquered the protein shake challenge and had possibly the only child in history who liked taking his “special” drink. Just when things seemed to be settled and quiet, we suffered a setback that none of us had been anticipating.

M woke one morning with a sore and slightly puffy left eye, which two days later, looked like someone had bopped him in the face and left him swollen and bruised. Having had my own eye problems over a decade earlier, this is one area that I am particularly sensitive to and without questionning my decision, we all headed to the local eye hospital. M and I went into A&E, whilst Mike and G disappeared off for a walk around the harbour and a second breakfast. We didn’t have to wait too long and the consultant quickly diagnosed Blepharitis, which is an inflammtion of the rim of the eyelid as a result of a bacterial infection. I was shown how to soothe M’s eye and we went away with a prescription for an antibiotic to ensure that the infection didn’t linger. Oh, if only every diagnosis and treatment was as swiftly delivered as that one!

One week later and a follow-up appointment at the Eye Hospital, and M’s eye had returned to normal and the infection appeared to have cleared. BUT, we hadn’t expected the impact of a simple infection and a course of antibiotics on M’s gastric health. It was like going back to our starting position a year earlier as all of the improvements disappeared and M’s health took a nose-dive. This was disappointing for us all and extremely frustrating for M. Having gained limited control over his toileting and his diet, we were back to square one and M couldn’t cope with this change to his circumstances.

What followed was a disheartening and frustration-fuelled few months. We made sure that his diet was as tightly controlled as possible and gave M as many outlets for his angst as possible. During this time, we learned that any infection that M experiences, even something as simple as the common cold, can upset his gastro system and cause a flare up. This leads to a return of the original symptoms and can take time to recover from. The eye infection started M’s flare up and the course of antibiotics added to it. I now know that M is living in a highly sensitive balance between his condition and his general health and this has to be one of the hardest things that we will have to deal with as he goes through life.

This state of affairs continued without improvement until finally, in the middle of August and not long before another holiday to Portugal, a GOSH registrar suggested we tried adding a probiotic supplement to M’s diet to help his body recover. We had a month to try out this change and it was tough. Whilst everyone had warned us about the difficulty we would face getting M to drink a protein shake, no-one though to mention that we would face similar challenges when introducing the humble probiotic supplement.

I think we tried just about everything to get M to take it, and have a vivid memory of sitting in the breakfast room of a London hotel whilst visiting for the 2012 Paralympics, with M on my lap, a glass of apple juice laced with probiotic on the table in front of me and a medicinal syringe to physically get the mixture into M. I have no doubt that we must have been a sight for sore eyes on that glorious September morning as families surrounded us enjoying their breakfast and I strong-armed M into taking his medicine; and I wonder what tales of family life in UK may have gone back with visitors from around the world.

The good news is that the probiotics helped and by the time of our return visit later in September, we had regained some of our lost footing, though we still weren’t moving along as quickly as any of us would have liked.

Life is a roller-coaster

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Having put M’s scopes behind us, we headed into February and our next appointment at GOSH with lighter hearts. We had been reassured that Dr Hill had identified what the problem was during the surgery and that all we needed was the biopsy results to confirm the diagnosis.

Unfortunately, Mike and I were about to hit a “low” on our roller-coaster ride. The much anticipated diagnosis of Crohn’s Disease was not supported by M’s biopsy results and we left that appointment with no end in sight. There was talk of putting him onto the “Elemental diet”, which entails removing all foods for a number of months until the body has time to recover. The prospect of having to consider a nasal-gastric tube to feed M for any length of time was a tough one and one that Mike and I disagreed over. I felt that we needed to do whatever was necessary to get our boy onto the road to recovery, whereas Mike felt this was too extreme an approach and one that he wasn’t yet prepared to commit to. The registrar we saw suggested that M had some blood tests done to rule out some other possible contenders before we headed down this road and another appointment was set for a month later with M in tow once again.

Another month passed and the day before M’s birthday, we headed back to GOSH. This time Mike wasn’t able to take the day off work, so Mum accompanied M and me on our trek to the capital. We weren’t really sure about what we were trying to achieve and where we were heading. M had now been on his free-from diet for 9 months and whilst we had made progress, it wasn’t enough to satisfy us or the medical team. We were also concerned that M’s weight gain was minimal especially as his appetite had dropped off since starting his new diet and it was becoming a tough game to get him to eat.

We left GOSH with a raft of medicines to add to M’s daily diet. He was prescribed Cetirizine and Ketotifen, both anti-histamines that would help his body recover and repair from the allergic reactions he was still suffering from internally. We also needed to introduce a protein shake called Neocate Active to help him gain and maintain his weight. The biggest challenge was going to be to convince M to drink the protein shakes as they are notoriously difficult to introduce successfully to children and even our GP wished us luck as he wrote the prescription.

True to form, however, after an initially bumpy start and numerous attempts at flavouring the shake, M willingly drank his shake daily and even now, 12 months on, has been known to ask for more than one in a 24-hour stretch! The medicines proved to make a difference to how M was feeling and whilst there were no immediately obvious improvements, M seemed to understand that they would help him feel better and took them with very little fuss.

It was during this time that I became a big fan of Dr. Google. I wasn’t looking for all the answers to all my questions, including those I hadn’t yet thought to ask, but rather needed to find information about the experiences we were going through and to know that we weren’t on our own. It is important to stress that you do have to be sensible in your approach to using on-line search engines to identify a condition. It would have been very easy to diagnose any one of a number of frightening illnesses, so a modicum of common sense had to prevail.

However, in my desire to understand why both antihistamines had been prescribed and what result we were trying to achieve, I stumbled across a list of symptoms that fitted M to a T. The Fabed website sought to educate and support families coping with something called “Eosinophilic disorders”. I knew nothing about these conditions, having never even really heard about eosinophils and what they were, but the symptoms rang a bell and I determined to read around it until I became a home-grown expert in it. I discovered not only Fabed, but also another website called Parentsown, which is home to a series of forums for varying conditions. Whilst the forums are not massively active, I made contact with a couple of other parents who had children with Eosinophilic disorders and became more convinced that this was the diagnosis we were seeking with M, although the condition was going to haunt me for another 9 months before we got it confirmed as a definitive diagnosis.

When life gives you lemons…

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…make lemonade. Isn’t that how the saying goes? I have to confess to pondering this one in the early hours of this morning after being woken up by a somewhat distraught M who had just had a soiling accident whilst asleep. He woke me at 3.45am and 2 hours later, my mind was still buzzing and sleep seemed a thing from the dim and distant past. This doesn’t happen very often, but the impact is huge and it got me to thinking.

The impact of M’s condition has been massive on us all as a family and not just on M himself. To anyone who has a “sick” child, you will understand what I mean.

Mike and I have suddenly had to become medical experts in our own rights, despite our alternate careers as an accountant and surveyor, as who else is going to make sure that the best is done for M? I now know so much more about gastro conditions and food allergies than I ever anticipated needing to know. I’ve had to learn coping mechanisms, not just for M to deal with his frustration and anger at being ill, but to help us cope as well. The years of not having an answer have taken their toll and both Mike and I have had to re-learn who our little boy is and what makes him tick. I have to be his first line of defense wherever we are and I’m the one in his corner fighting his cause.

One of the hardest things about this illness is that there are no obvious outward signs that M is ill. He is a slight child and even when seriously underweight and struggling with full toilet-training, he has never lacked energy or enthusiasm for life. He may suffer with stomach cramps and joint aches that would floor most adults, but he just gets on with it. His complaints of aching limbs have been ignored for years as I was guilty of thinking of him as a “moaning” child, but now I know that those aches are very real and extremely uncomfortable whilst they last. He has been living the last 7 years with these as his normal, so he only stops when he’s suffering extreme moments of pain. He had then, and continues to have, the most amazing stamina and a reserve of energy that I can only envy. He is constantly on the go and has never let his health problems slow him down. In very many ways, this is his greatest strength, but also the biggest problem for us.

The lack of obvious evidence of his poor health means that people just don’t understand that he is ill and look at me in disbelief when I explain just how poorly he can be and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t blame them at all. He doesn’t look like a child who eats fresh air and frequently manages on less than 8 hours sleep a night; but he is.

I don’t think that Mike will mind me sharing that he has struggled to come to terms with M’s condition. I have an advantage in that I have grown up living with my own T1 diabetes. I know that these things can be survived and have just got on with it. Mike has found it harder and has longed for an easier fix than the road we seem to be travelling down at the moment. Of course, we now have a diagnosis and that has helped us all. Being able to put a name to the condition, even though it’s so rare that no-one ever seems to have heard of it, means that our fight has not been in vain and we can no longer be dismissed as fussy parents. This is M’s life for now and for the foreseeable future, and as his parents, our job is to ensure that he learns how to make the best of a bad situation.

M has struggled too, as you would expect and his levels of frustration at times are massive. Not only is he restricted by what he can eat and how his body reacts, but he also has to deal with the knock-on consequences. It is no longer possible for him to go home for tea with his friends, attend birthday parties, participate in cooking at school or even have a Christmas or Easter treat, without me having to provide a detailed list of what he can and can’t eat and the inevitable 20 minute discussion with the adult in charge about his condition. We encourage him to have a go at whatever he wants and refuse to let his condition dictate who he is or how he lives his life; and a big thank you has to go to my parents who brought me up with that very same approach to T1D and my life.

He acts out – he kicks and hits and shouts and bites – and sadly the people who have to survive the mood swings are us and G. G has had a hard role to play as the big sister to a poorly child. She worries about his health and I know struggles when we have to disappear off to London for the day for his hospital check-ups. But, she is also a child and has her own challenges to deal with. My children are the best of friends and would defend each other to the end; but are also the worst of enemies. It has become extremely important for us to invest as much time in G as we can and the last couple of months have enabled us to do just that far more than before. She recently took part in a music event organised by the local authority music education department and her clarinet skills were considered good enough to allow her to play with the wind band. This was something just for her and she loved every moment.

She has also been invited to join the local swimming club and that is something we are keen to encourage her to do. There was a point when we wondered a couple of years ago if she’d ever learn to swim, but she is now excelling at it and her teacher invited her to join the Club to see how she gets on. It’s an additional time commitment on a weekly basis for us as she will need to attend at least 1 extra training session a week as well as competitions, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m proud of both my children – M for his stoicism in dealing with his condition and making the most of life; and G for her continued hard work at school and at her after-school clubs. She may not like the fact that M misses school regularly to attend hospital appointments, but she admits that she wouldn’t want to have the blood tests and diet that he has. Neither child has an easy cross to bear right now, but I hope Mike and I manage to get it right enough to see them successfully and happily through to adulthood.

7 years to diagnosis

Searching for an answer