If it's not one thing... it's an allergy!!

Life has been rough in our home for some time. Jess has been feeling, well, poopy for lack of a better work. It started back in December with some belly aches after he eats, needing to lie down for a bit. If you know Jesse and his relationship with food, this shouldn't come as a surprise. He eats more than a grown man, eventually it should start to give him a belly ache.. So I didn't really think much of it..

But it continued and eventually started getting worse and I noticed it wasn't from over eating, he was hardly eating at all and now complaining even in between meals.. but still playing and enjoying life. I remember thinking that he didn't complain once when we were in SLC for Aaron's wedding so thankfully he must be over it... but actually he was just NOT complaining because he was too busy enjoying his time with Adrienne... As soon as we got on the plane he confessed he had been feeling bad.. hummm...

This sort of continued for the next few weeks, being sick when it was just us, but playing normal when he was with his friends or if we were doing something fun... I started getting really worried about our old "haunts" rejection, cancer... you know, little stuff like that that can sneak up on you slowly... so we began a process of elimination..

You will be happy to know he is completely cancer free and experiencing NO rejection!! Yay..

But, we did find he has much damage in his esophagus and stomach.. at first we though it was acid reflux and started him on medicine to treat this problem. By this point he as become much worse and was missing a lot of school and even sleep at night. I started wondering if he was depressed, faking, or just fooling around... again, it sort of came and went.. weird. After a month on meds he was still missing school and laying around on the couch most of the day... So I got desperate and scaled him back to the BRAT diet... You know the one... Banana's, rice, applesauce and toast. I knew this was a diet for nausea, but I didn't care, it was easy on the tummy and that's all I had room to care about. He won't eat toast, so basically it was a BRA diet.. After a week I could see an improvement... Yay!! My goal was to get his guts healed from all the irritation and damage. In theory, healing, along with meds should enable him to resume his normal diet. But, I kept having these nagging questions in the back of my mind... Why acid reflux? why now? What's causing it?

I began sneaking food back in and he began complaining again... After dragging him back to the doctor, we decided to do some blood allergy tests... They came back horribly positive... as in HE'S ALLERGIC TO FOOD!!! Panic set in, what if he's allergic to all foods?

Side Note: Remember how he developed a massive cancerous tumor in his belly because the anti-rejection medicine he takes to keep his body from rejecting his new organs sort of messed with his cell building process and caused something to go wacky? (which we know is how cancer is started.. cell's gone wacky..) Well, same concept.. same med, same malfunction of the cells. This time anti-bodies are produced against common foods causing allergies... ugh!!

Off to an allergist for skin testing.. which is a very long story all on it's own, but to give you the readers digest version, he has many food allergies. But is NOT allergic to food in general. Thank Goodness!! His list of no tolerance foods are as follows... No, beans, peanuts, green peas, wheat, soy, eggs, chicken, turkey, pork or tomatoes.. 11 item, but if you'll notice, they are items that are in almost EVERY food a kid likes to eat... and while I appreciate knowing NOT to feed him these foods, I'm positive there are still more.. we just haven't found them yet.. So, we are now gluten-free in our house. Which is the biggest change I guess. Soy and eggs are in almost all processed foods if you read the label. And of course eating out is off the table, fast food, pizza, spaghetti and worst of all sausage!! Our only saving grace here is that he can have cheese... and so I feed him a lot of cheese right now. He can have beef and fish as a protein and corn and rice as a grain... very limited options for providing dinner at the end of the day, not to mention breakfast and oh, yes... no school lunch either, so there is that little chore too..

Have you ever tried to buy foods that are free of everything?? They exists for sure, but I will have to sell Jesse just to pay for them.. ;-) I feel confused and frustrated. Since I've been trying to eliminate every food he's allergic to he's been feeling much better, which makes me so happy. But on the other hand, things have slipped through almost every other day and he's still had many bouts of feeling lousy.

We are feeling challenged right now, but I do see a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. I realize things could be worse than food allergies... but try to tell that to Jesse. He's definitely mourning some much loved comfort foods right now. Poor fella. I know this is just a learning curve for all of us and we work through this as we have all other obstacles, but it feels a bit overwhelming right now...

Please, don't send McDonalds... ;)

P.S. I have developed some very yummy cookies and brownies without wheat or eggs... now to find foods that are actually nutritious.. :-) A gals got to have priorities right??