It's been 2 weeks since we started the diet and, after some rough going, things have leveled out.
The hardest adjustment for me has been fluid intake. Soren still drinks from a bottle. But he doesn't hold the bottle. So I have to hold him and hold the bottle for him. And while this can be a very sweet time for us, the boy is now 7 years old and keeps on growing! However, I stopped growing many years ago so he's beginning to swamp me. Because of this situation, I would give Soren a bottle of milk in the morning and in the evening. Thus, I knew that Soren was getting 16 oz. of fluids into him a day.
This is not a lot of fluid. I know this. I would try now and again to get a bottle into him after school, but this was hit and miss depending on what therapies he had on any given day. But, in starting the diet, Soren's nutritionist feared (rightly so) that Soren was rather dehydrated. So she wanted me to DOUBLE his fluids.
That meant 2 more bottles. That meant 2 more times I would have to find in the day to sit down and hold him while he drank. Now, Soren can do this in 10 minutes or he can be a pill and take 45 minutes. So the thought of doing this made me incredibly anxious. It would be like having a newborn again.
Plus, one of these bottles HAD to be at lunch time. Now, this is all well and good on the weekends when Soren is with me. But on the weekdays when he's at school? How was that going to work? Soren is REALLY picky about who he allows to give him his bottle. I feared I would have to drive up to school every day for lunch for this, which would really cut into my already packed days.
Fortunately for me, Soren goes to a great school where they love him to pieces. I told his teacher our predicament and she said that his aid would gladly give him a bottle at lunch. I breathed a sigh of relief. Could this possibly work?
Well, the first week of the diet was definitely the roughest. After our 2 1/2 days in the hospital, Soren and were both beat. That night, I was trying to get his last bottle into him, and Soren would not drink. I broke down in tears, wanting to give up then and there. But then Aaron held Soren for an hour while Soren slept on him, out cold. When Soren woke up, he was refreshed and ready to drink and did so lickety split.
The next day, when he went back to school, I showed up to see how Soren was doing with the bottle. He was NOT drinking. So I sat down with him and fed him 80% of the bottle. I then handed him back to his aid and Soren drank the rest down for her. Now that we did that "transition," he's doing a great job for her.
So now Soren is a great job at eating the food and, for the most part, drinking his drinks. He's much more alert, which could be from the diet or the added hydration--or both. He is still having daily seizures, but they are fewer. Only 1-3 a day versus 10-20 a day.
We are going to give the diet a full 3 months and assess the situation then, deciding if the benefits are worth the work. We aren't going to mess with his meds in any way so that we will know, as well as we can, if and good or bad stuff is connected to the diet.
But I will continue to keep you posted on the progress or set-backs we encounter.
Amy
No comments:
Post a Comment