Eating Like There's No Tomorrow...

Nathan's been on his antibiotic for 8 days now. All of a sudden like a switch was flipped Nathan's appetite returned last night and it has continued throughout today! That boy has had more applesauce, chicken, and green beans today than I can keep cooked up and ready to serve just about! It's so puzzling because these are the same foods that he would look at the past couple of weeks and flat out refuse to eat! Not sure if his antibiotic is what's helped or not, his coughing at night seemed to go away the second night of being on it. I'm leaning more towards it being that the egg is finally out of his system. We'll just have to wait and see. We will do as the doctor ordered and continue the antibiotic for two more weeks and then re-trial the egg. Please continue to pray that his appetite stays so strong, there isn't much out there that gets me down in the dumps, but him not wanting to eat sure gets me there quickly! I feel like a victory has been won every meal he actually eats and it makes me so happy! (Even if it's the same three foods over and over again.) :o)

Three Weeks of Augmentin...

So I called Dr. Williams last Friday morning, because I still hadn't heard anything about a new Rx for Nathan's nasal spray medication. He said that Dr. Irani wanted to see him and do a nasal smear before changing his medicine to determine if it were allergy or infection causing his sinus problems and coughing at night.

Dr. Irani, being the amazing doctor that she is had us come in right away on Friday and took care of it! It turns out that there were no allergy cells and plenty of infection cells. :o( This is good news because it means his Nasonex it still doing it's job! But it is confusing news, because we are now left to wonder if the eggs really were a problem, or if it was just a coincidence that he started coughing two days after starting them and that drainage from a sinus infection is to blame. She started him on a three week course of antibiotics to help clear his sinus infection, once it is gone she wants us to trial the eggs again.

I am apprehensive of trying them again just because of Nathan's terrible fit he threw the day I decided to stop the egg trial. He screamed as if I were trying to feed him poison when he saw the eggs that morning and didn't stop screaming until I threw them in the trash. To me, that says he knows they made his tummy hurt.

Along with Dr. Irani's advice, Mark and I did agree to trial egg again, this time only giving him things with eggs that are baked. Because of his limited food choices the simplest things I can come up with right now are meringue cookies and meatloaf without bread crumbs in it for him to trial. If they seem to do well, I'll consider making him a "safe" version of cookies or a cake with real egg in it, but for anyone who has ever tried baking with anything other than wheat flour and dairy, it's a whole lot of work! Nathan is totally worth the effort, but he can't live off of baked goodies for every meal, and I'd rather him have at least one more real "meal" option! He hasn't been in to his meats (chicken, pork, or beef) here lately so maybe this will be a way to get him to eat some.

Also, I forgot to mention in my last post about the appointment with Dr. Williams...

To add to the confusion with all this, Nathan was switched from Prevacid to Nexium by Dr. Williams' nurse practicioner (due to insurance issues... GRRR!) about two weeks before we started the egg trial. I told Dr. Williams that the NP wanted us to give him half of the 10mg packet so that's what we were doing. He said that Nathan needed the whole 10mg packet, we started that Thursday morning. Nathan's coughing was better that night and the same for Friday night. I didn't think anything of it until Saturday night... we had forgotten to give Nathan his Nexium that morning and he coughed all night. Sunday, I was sure to give it to him and again, he slept quietly Sunday night.

So this adds yet another variable to this crazy puzzle as to what the problem really was, I am praying it was the sinus infection and incorrect dose of Nexium causing the coughing and gagging, egg would be a huge food for Nathan to add to his "safe" list! So as with all things EoE, we'll just have to be patient and wait for these three weeks to move along and if his sinus infection clears, we will try the egg again.