We took a break from blogging for a few weeks, but are now back at it...
Today, we've been on the SCD for 6 months with our son without any additional medications. We made it through the holidays reasonably well, but he is beginning to show signs of burn-out with eating the same foods over and over again. Snack-time is particularly boring, alternating between cheese and squash buttons and yogurt. We're a bit reluctant to give him anything that might set him off, because he seems to be feeling good lately.
Food:
Since I've been home for the last week, we've tried to reintroduce some snacks like fruit leathers (grape) and today we gave him a pickle (Bubbies). While the fruit leathers seem to go okay and he liked the pickle, the pickle seemed to trigger an urgent run to the bathroom! Twice. We'll see, they *are* a little spicy. We're otherwise where we were a month ago: Stage 2 to 3 of the diet. We did have some stuffed bell peppers tonight that were excellent and seemed to go over reasonably well. I stuffed them with sauteed zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, and jerk pork sausage (without the sugar or dried onion).
Current Symptoms:
More or less the same: no pain, but still having (smelly) oatmeally diarrhea a couple of times per day with occasional blood.
Next Month:
A few readers have suggested that we might consider one medication or another to try and clear up the remaining symptoms. At this point, we are looking into supplemental medications but haven't found any that really look promising. The 5-ASA class of meds, we've been told, are quite large to swallow for a 4 year-old. Also, the potential side-effects scare us. In fact, the potential side-effects of ALL IBD drugs scare us. In my crazy mind, prednisone seems like a reasonable alternative to everything else. We are investigating whether or not budesonide is a reasonable "bridge" medication while trying to heal his gut with the SCD.
Enteral nutrition is another therapy we've been reading more up on. We're not there yet -- it would be interesting to hear what his GI doc would say about it! While I would certainly try it as an adult, I don't think I could ask my son to do it at this point in time. He likes his morning pancakes too much. Maybe in a couple of years when he becomes more reasonable!
Other news:
My wife and I received an early Christmas present: our son will have another little brother or sister in August. Quite a shock! Especially since we thought we'd taken precautions with an IUD! After the shock wore off, we decided that having the distraction from Crohn's would be good for everyone. It also puts some pressure on us to figure out a sustainable diet that works with our time/schedule and his belly.
