100 days since the cheese sandwich -Endoscopy

Oh wow! I counted back to the cheese sandwich. 100 days! Today is 100 days. Today is also marked by finally getting an endoscopy for my son. We will leave for the Children's Hospital in about two hours. It's been just a lot. A lot of sickness, a lot of late nights, a lot of missed school, a lot of medicine, a lot of food journaling, a  lot of doctoring, a lot of tests, xrays, skin pricks, blood draws, a lot of food elimination, and a whole lot of frustration. Jayden is currently off 16 foods, the doctor recently added 5 more foods to our long list that we had already. The good thing about being off those foods is that everything that goes into Jayden's mouth with very few exceptions are hand made. So if we have any big acid attacks I can pretty much pinpoint the ingredient that did him in. The guess work is fairly minimal which is a much nicer place to be in then when we were spinning out of control.

I still don't enjoy the whole gluten-free experiment, but I'm much more efficient with it now. I understand the cookbooks and I've learned to add in an extra tablespoon of sugar to all the recipes, which gets rid of the "gluten-free taste." I've learned to make bread, and muffins, and cakes that taste really good. We made a great monkey bread, that was really good. I'm going to attempt making cream puffs next (I'm a total baker - I like things that taste good and sweet. :) ) My husband has learned to make pizza dough and a tomato-less pizza sauce which is great tasting. He makes all his own chicken broth now. We know how to not cross-contaminate foods and we have learned that paying for Halloween candy goes a long way towards a happy face on a rather dismal "I-can't-eat-anything" Halloween. And my husband has learned not to surprise me with, "there's no more gluten-free bread," as it takes a three hour time block (which I don't have many of) to make.

Without a doubt we eat better now. All of us. I introduce foods better now too. Here's my plan: Try a small portion of an isolated food ONCE during a week. In the second week, try it two or three times with at least a day in between. And then try it maybe two days in a row. I'm not joking. It's 100 days since we introduced one cheese sandwich. We have 16 foods that we are off of. It will takes us a year to get back on them. And that is when he is well.

So here is the stats:

• June 8th - Gave Jayden Advil by June 10th he was doubled over and couldn't breathe well. Had massive stomach problems and pains.
• Late June: We took him off all the acid-producing foods.
• July 24: Started giving him milk

• July 27: Gave him THE cheese sandwich.
• July 28th: Started him on a medicine for acid reflux
• July 29th: Jayden said he thought he would die because he felt so bad.
• Aug 5th: Started him on Omepetrozole
• Somewhere between Aug. 6th and 19th we committed to going gluten-free and it helped us quite a bit and committed to food journaling! (Best thing we've done).
• Aug. 19th: Jayden told me to chart things out (smart kid!) And we charted these: Feel like throwing up, Stomach pain, Acid Amount, Burping level, and Overall. We assigned everything a number on a 0-4 scale. 0 - no problems, and 4 meaning we are going to ER.
• Since Aug. 19th (and certainly not before that) we have only had three, THREE days of all zeros. That's it. We've had many days where the numbers have hit 3.5-3.9 (he was never willing to say 4). 
• Sometime in Sept. I felt that the medicine might actually be the cause of his stomach issues.
• Late September we switched to Zantac. What a difference that made! His stomach issues and a whole lot of the burping disappeared. Unfortunately, the Omeprazole was making Jayden feel sick all the time (that makes me so mad!) BUT it was also doing a good job controlling the burning acid. When we switched medicines we had some intense and scary days. 10 hours of acid a day. It was so scary. 
• It's been about 30 days since we started the Zantac and I finally feel that it is working a whole lot better at least for this last week.
• Nov. 2, 2011 marked 8 full days that Jayden has been in school and 10 days with school and weekend and after school activities. It's the first time he has been in school for even 5 full days since all of this started.
• November 3, 2011 we have to break the going to school streak for this endoscopy. It's been a big dilemma. We don't want to do the endoscopy and here we are making a turn for the better. But better is not well. Last Saturday he had a rough night.  Jayden turned to me and said, "I just want this to end." --Oh, baby, me too. Me too.