Welcome to Winning Against Eosinophilic Esophagitis
I wanted to start this blog to share with people the challenges families face when a child suffers from the condition called Eosinophilic Esophagitis. I didn’t know anything about food allergies or eosinophilic esophagitis (EE) prior to my son being born in 2004. Since this all began, we’ve been through so much. In my desperation and search for information and support I have read so many other stories about children with EE. Some of those stories brought me to tears and have made me truly grateful that our situation is what it is, and not any worse. My heart goes out to all the families dealing with EE and food allergies, no matter how little or how much it affects you. I’m hoping that by sharing our story more people will become aware of this condition, and that it might help some families get some support or answers. I know for a long time we didn’t even know what was going on, but now we have a diagnosis that we can work with. I hope that we all lead a winning battle against this life changing condition.
To read about our story, scroll down toward the bottom of this page.
I just thought I'd share a book with everyone. In looking for a cure for my son's dis-ease someone recommended the science of Bruce Lipton to me. The basic premise behind his research is that our health is not determined by our genetics, but rather our beliefs. Our genetics can change, our biology changes based on our environment and beleifs. I know, it sounds odd, but it's the field of Epigenetics. I encourage you to take a look at his work and see if it doesn't click with you. It certainly does for me! I'll be continuing my research in this direction to help my son.
My son is the perfect bill of health, except for some silly picture they showed me after an endoscope. I believe that my son has internalized everything we've talked about in front of him and he believes what he hears because he is less than 6 years old, and in turn, his body has made what he believes and hears "truth". So it's time to help him believe otherwise, and ot STOP talking about negative things, specifically EE in front of him.
I have not gone off the deep end. I've just always been a more open minded person. It's hard to go that path though because most of society thinks it's strange and that we must believe the western world of medicine. I don't think so. There is more and more proof everyday about the mind-body connection. And now there is science to back it up.
Thanks,
Tracy
I haven't been on recently because I'm just frustrated with this disease and the lack of answers. Short update... after the upper endoscope in August that was not as expected (we expected it to be 100% clear and it was far from that) we were told by the GI to go see the Allergist and get his diet figured out. Well, we talked, and decided to do more skin prick testing to see if there are things in his current diet that could be causing the bump in the road. Well, out of 32 foods and spices we tested, he had a positive response to all of them except four! The doctor wanted to take out quite a few things that are basic standars in our house on an already modified diet. I left the office in tears not knowing how I was going to manage this. At least he didn't remove everything that was positive as is typical or we'd have to seriously consider alternative methods of nutrition. He said he'd call the GI and get back to me because he was considering removing additional items. Well, two weeks go by and no call so I phoned the GI directly. She called me back within 30 minutes. She was shocked but didn't want to take away all foods. She wanted to call the Allergist and get back to me. Funny how later that afternoon the Allergist called and said "did you talk to the GI? Because I did too!?" Duh, yeah, because I couldn't wait for you to get back to me any longer! So anyway, we talked more about all the foods to be removed and he doesn't believe that he's truly allergic to all of these things. But with a test that is only 55% accurate for positives I wouldn't base much on it!! How can you eliminate a child's diet based on such a flaky test!!! So my husband and I talked and we've agreed to remove the wheat again (which we think was the main problem in the first place) and increase the Flovent and as well remove some additional foods based on the most recent skin prick test. He is still eating many foods he tested positive for. But we also wondered, if we remove a ton of foods, how will we know which ones were truly the problem, especially, as mentioned before, it's such a non-accurate test!
The other reason I haven't posted much lately is because I really don't want to attract more energy to this stupid frustrating condition! I have been working with my son to stay positive, to focus on the knowledge that his body is strong and healthy and is getting better and better every single day. Honestly, if the doctor hadn't showed me the pictures of his esophagus, I'd argue that he is perfectly healthy! There is scientific support that the mind and body are very much connected. If he's hearing us talk about his dis-ease all the time, he's going to internalize it. If he's thinking about how strong and healthy he is and how he's getting better every day, he WILL get better every day. It was only after I started sharing our story and hearing about all the other cases out there that we did a backslide into the EE hole. So we're distancing ourselves a bit from the whole idea of having some sort of dis-ease and instead focusing on being healthy! I hope you can all understand that.
Thanks!
Tracy
Our Story
My son Jason was born January 17, 2004. He was a very easy baby. His only issue was that he spit up like crazy and lots of it. The doctor was never concerned because he was gaining weight just fine. He was my first baby so I just thought it was normal. In fact, he was a chubby little baby. He also had eczma but no concern there either because it didn’t seem to bother him and it’s pretty common.
At his 12 month doctor visit they drew some blood for some standard tests including things like lead and iron. Our pediatrician called though concerned about a very high level of eosinophils in his blood. She told me these typically indicate some sort of allergy. We did some further RAST testing (blood tests) to see if he might have any allergies and then we visited with the allergist. He wasn’t much concerned because all the testing doesn’t mean anything if there are no outward signs to back it up. He did score high for egg allergy and some others also showed up. He recommended we avoid egg and peas (peas was the one thing that started to cause him to break out in small hives where they touched).
Interestingly enough, for his first birthday we had some friends over and he ate birthday cake. Shortly thereafter he vomited and it was a big fiasco and my friend had to show me how to use my portable rug scrubber. It was a memorable day! But looking back now, he most likely had an allergic reaction to egg in the birthday cake.
Despite the removal of egg from his diet, he continued to “spit up”. Though now that he wasn’t a baby, it was more that he was vomiting. But visits to the doctor’s office came back with discussions about a very sensitive gag reflex, and possible reflux.
As time went on it got worse. We carried a barf bucket along with us everywhere we went because it would happen without warning. It wasn’t always after he ate. Zantac wasn’t doing anything to help the situation. He was eventually throwing up 2-3 times a day without any rhyme or reason. It was utterly exhausting to always be on edge. Any time he coughed we would run through the house to grab a bucket and try to catch it. There were several bedtimes that ended up with messy sheets, midnight baths and lots of tears. He cried every time he threw up and he didn’t want to do it anymore. He also wore a plastic bib for meals no matter what because in the middle of his meal sometimes it would come right back up, hardly chewed and definitely not digested. I don’t even know that it was making it down his esophagus. This is all pretty gross, I know, but it all makes complete sense now.
In September 2006 I happened to find some other mom on a message board who said “sounds like my son’s symptoms… have you checked for eosinophilic esophagitis?” I checked out what little information I could find about it and it seemed to fit Jason’s symptoms right on. I took him back to the pediatrician and told her that something is definitely not right and that I wanted to see a Gastroenterologist asap and to discuss eosinophilic esophagitis (EE). We saw the GI very quickly and scheduled an upper endoscopy to do a biopsy, the only way to identify for sure if the condition is EE or not. The results were good and bad at the same time. Yes, indeed he did have eosinophils in his esophagus indicating he had EE. We were sad, but at the same time, we were just finally so relieved to get an answer as to why he was throwing up constantly. He was on Zantac and swallowing Qvar daily to help manage the condition, but they truly didn’t make any difference.
We were referred to an allergist again. On October 17, 2006 he had some scratch testing done on his back. He showed allergic reactions to a long list of things. We were sent home with list of things to avoid. We were in tears over how we would manage to eat while avoiding eggs, chicken, turkey, wheat, corn, soy, nuts, peanuts and peas. And we were sad that he wouldn’t get to experience food like the average kid. I went through our kitchen cabinets reading every single label and getting terribly frustrated because our food is laden with these products. However…
Amazingly, my son didn’t throw up a single day after we changed his diet! We were so completely happy. Seeing him be so much more healthy was all the inspiration we needed to seek out other food options and to make this work. He had another biopsy on January 16, 2007 which showed he was 100% clear! Again, we were terribly excited that the restricted diet worked. We would continue on that diet for quite some time longer. We had periodic check ins with the GI and the Allergist. Lucky for Jason, his blood eosinophils seems to be related to his condition. I’m told that not all people can be followed with blood testing to see how they’re doing. But in his case, we could see that his blood eosinophils had gone way down.
In March 2007 he came down with a cold that left him broken out in hives and throwing up. I had not heard of cold viruses giving people hives before, until then. But as soon as the cold passed, so did the hives and the occasional vomiting. His blood had tested a higher level of eosinophils which then went back down after this viral episode.
And again, not a single symptom of his EE since we had changed his diet. We continued with this diet for over a year. His medicines changed a bit… Cimetidine, swallowing Flovent, taking Zyrtec for seasonal allergies, and iron supplements. But all in all, things were 99% good. There was just that lingering small amount of eosinophils in his blood.
In January of 2008 he underwent a repeat of the scratch testing. He now showed negative for a lot of things he had previously shown positive for! We were so excited that we might be able to reintroduce some foods back into his diet. But the doctor wanted to do patch testing to confirm the allergies.
In February 2008 we did the patch testing only to find that he showed positive to many foods still. In fact, he showed positive to milk which we hadn’t been avoiding in the past.
I came home half in tears again. Instead of adding things back in, we were now removing more items. Actually, we got to put wheat back in (that’s a biggie), but we had to remove milk and barley (which is in a lot of wheat products). It was hard to tell him that he could no longer have ice cream, cheese and butter. But actually, he seems to be taking it better than us!
So far we’re managing. It’s so difficult when someone is allergic to milk AND soy. And it’s so difficult with such a long list because there is usually at least one thing in everything that he can’t have. And corn… don’t get me started with corn and corn syrup being in everything!
I hope to someday deliver a happy ending to this story. Until then, we continue the battle!
