If you’ve ever met Kendall in real life, chances are, you’ve seen her live up to her nickname “the Condiment Queen”. And what that means is that rather than actually eating real food, Kendall is mildly obsessed with eating the “condiments” – butter, jelly, syrup, whipped cream (yes she’s basically on the Elf diet).
And what this has to do with anything is that the condiment queen is about to reign supreme.
I hinted last week on Kendall’s page that we had had a VERY encouraging GI appointment in Milwaukee but that I needed to blog the news in order to do it justice.
The back story to why this is such good news:
*sigh as I try to figure out where to back up to in order to capture all of the feelings associated herewith*…..
Ok the back story is too long to fully explain. Basically – three years ago this month, Kendall was miserable. She was constantly sick, needing a ton of oxygen on a daily basis, was making no progress in the daily therapy she was undergoing, and we were at a complete loss as to how to keep her healthy, get her to grow, stop the intense pain she was in (pain/nausea due to feeds into her jejunem/intestines). At that time her doctors decided to start her on TPN and we began “gut rest”. The rest is kind of history. Ups, downs, good times, bad times…..but through it all, we have tried to keep a sense of “normalcy” with regard to food. It has never seemed right or normal to me to not have her sit at the table with us for family meals. Not that we are the Cleavers who sit down every night for a fancy meal – but when we are together and are eating, we put her at the table with us and make her a plate of appropriate foods and if she wants to taste/lick/eat a bite or two – great! And if not, no pressure.
Food is such a social thing. So many events in life involve food or are centered around food – and I never wanted her “issues” to be anything that made her stand out or hold her back. Of course we have learned what does or doesn’t work for her (meaning basically we’ve learned that some things cause more pain than they are worth and some things are MUCH easier to suck back out of her gastric tube than others!) And it’s not like Kendall eats a large amount of food by any stretch of the imagination.
But she WILL eat some things. She grazes. A bite or two here, go play, a bite or two an hour later, maybe a lick of butter as a snack, then a couple more bites of applesauce later. I’m really really proud of how well we have done at keeping her “oral” in spite of all the gut issues she endures. And even though it doesn’t always go all the way through her system (most of it ends up sitting in her very weak stomach until it drains out hours later) – she eats.
How this relates to our current news:
Her GI doctor has come to the realization after the last few years of trialing multiple formulas, that maybe Kendall’s body is just not ever going to accept a commercially prepared formula as a means of nutrition. This really isn’t surprising considering the ingredients of most of them (corn syrup, etc.) – but it’s a confusing and hard to understand thing. i don’t know WHY her body doesn’t accept the formula – and really, even that is just a theory at this point – but clearly, j-feeds have only led to a vicious cycle of bad septic episodes. The last few months we have given her a break from j-feeds, and she is doing fabulously. Coincidence? It’s hard to say. But it’s not really a theory anyone wants to put to the test again.
so for right now – we are saying “see ya” to j-feeds of formula, and we are saying “come on, condiment queen!” to the rest of her gut! We are going to let Kendall prove to us what she can do for herself nutritionally. we are going to be SLOWLY SLOWLY SLOWLY weaning the calories down out of her TPN, and seeing if she can continue to maintain her nutritional status based on what she can take in orally.
i’ve gone over her diet with a fine tooth comb with our TPN dietician, and she is aware that we are talking miniscule amounts of food right now. But the hope is that if we can keep Kendall’s lower GI tract “cleaned out”, and maybe force her into “hunger” by reducing her calories, that she will inherently take in more calories on her own. Again – it’s only a theory at this point – but it is at least a PLAN and it at least FEELS like we are making forward progress!
right now Kendall’s TPN calories are three times what a “normal” 6 year old needs based on metabolic testing that we’ve done. Weaning her calories will be a painstakingly slow progress before we can say we’ve done anything major or noteworthy – but the point is – we ARE making progress. We are moving forward – and this is HUGE!!!!!
I feel like i’ve not done a fabulous job of fully explaining why this is all so awesome or why certain things work while others don’t. I guess on some level – I don’t have all the answers. I just plain don’t know why my kid is the way she is. I just know she’s awesome, and she’s forging her own path. And i don’t know where this path will take us. But I’m glad to be on it.
So that’s our news!
I have lots more other blog posts floating around in my head – but my computer is still being slow and stupid and I’m feeling not very coherent right now so i’ll try to post more tomorrow.
Peace out party people~
T-crest.