Halloween

Given the SCD, for those who are wondering, we've made our kids a deal: $1.00 per piece of candy. Of course, being a math/stats guy, I realize that this ratio is absurd in the long run and that they could break the bank by the time they hit elementary school. But for now, it seems good -- for every piece of candy you bring home, you get $1 to spend at our local toy store. Keeps some the fun and incentive in it for them - and mommy and daddy get to eat candy after they go to bed!

The Asparagus Set Back

One of the main motivations for documenting our son's experience with the SCD is that we cannot find testimonials other than: (1) I've been healthy for 5 years thanks to the SCD (but don't describe the journey towards healthiness), or (2) that the diet is difficult to follow (mainly from Amazon.com reviewers of BTVC). I really want someone to tell me to persevere and that this is exactly what I should expect....

So after 3.5 months on the diet, while we have a happy med-free kid, we still have the classic IBD symptoms. Slightly crunchy asparagus the other night with homemade hollandaise sauce did not do any of us any favors and added some pain for our son. At least, that's what I think it was!

We still need to get the allergy tests completed that were requested by the naturopathic docter. Who knows? Perhaps he is allergic to something that is hindering progress of the diet.

Not all is bad: he had a homemade "pumpkin pie" (under stage 2, made with butternut squash) for his fourth birthday this week and he just devoured it.

Lemon Ice Cream

Tonight, we had some lemon ice cream that the kids devoured. My ice cream maker was on the fritz so we had to put this into the freezer instead. It turned out more like an lemon Icee instead.

2 cups homemade yogurt
1/2 to 2/3 cup Real Lemon juice or fresh
1 lemon peel graded
1/2 cup of honey

Throw into ice cream maker for 20-30 minutes.

Hamburgers for Dinner

This combination seems to work reasonably well:

Hamburger Patty w/ Shredded Cheese & Guacamole (homemade)
Cantaloupe
Peas w/ butter

Symptoms and CDAI

Many SCD sites and blogs display helpful recipes and tips, but VERY few give information about the other side of it -- does it work?... how are your symptoms?... are you better? While we have no formal baseline values to compare to, I'll begin by saying he's feeling better than he was on medication (6-MP) alone. We'll continue to provide both at this site in order to track our progress both with the diet itself and whether or not it helps moderate Crohn's symptoms in our boy.

SYMPTOM UPDATE (3 months on SCD)
Stool: Our son tends to have 2-3 mushy-to-explosive poops a day (almost one after each meal) and most still have blood in them.
Pain: He has not complained of any stomach pain in quite some time
Energy: It comes in spurts, but seems comparable to his sister's level of energy.
Behavior: He's 3 going on 4 with a strong personality... so disentangling that with bowel irritation is tough! Days with more bowel movements tend to impact his irritability. I'd say this occurs on 1 out of every 5 to 7 days at this point.
Weight: Not sure exactly as our scale is a little squirrely. On our scale, he has gained 2 pounds in three months.

October 14, 2009 CDAI = 38.

Curcumin

We just introduced curcumin into our son's diet yesterday. It's not clear that this formulation is SCD legal, but was prescribed by the naturopathic doctor who also insisted on sticking with SCD. We'll see, he also prescribed FloraStor and I'm holding off on that.

So, in addition to SCD, the list of Crohn's 'treatments' we're on includes:
- multivitamin twice daily
- one drop of vitamin b12
- 1 tsp fish oil, though this will be the first thing I drop
- Intestinal Repair Complex
- 1 tsp curcumin

Nature Doc

He was interesting. He gave my son and I 1.5 hours of his time to discuss our last year and he asked lots of questions. He'll definitely be doing some things that we've wanted to do for a while now, such as test for food allergies and intolerance. He is also checking for vitamin deficiency and celiac disease (another food intolerance that is common among people with Crohn's). The Children's doctors would absolutely NOT do any of this for us even though I asked them to on multiple occasions.

The downside. Seven "naturopathic medications" and $225 later I left the clinic... and that doesn't include the cost of the appointment (which my health insurance will pick up, thankfully). Vitamins, fish oil, curcumin, FloraStor, Intestinal Repair Complex, etc... and he had it all so conveniently there. I understand them all individually, but to throw all of them at us at once was a little much.

You know what? I gave the conventional doctors a shot and they screwed up and didn't know how to treat our son. I'll give the unconventional doctor a shot too and see if he does any better. The funny thing is that he wouldn't talk to me about the one thing I wanted to talk about: the SCD diet. He indicated that he'll discuss things with you after 6 months on the diet, but noted that colleagues at U California have observed greatest effects after two years! Ughhhh...

IBD Internet Radio Link

I think I might like that naturopathic doc. He gave an internet radio broadcast about Crohn's/IBD a few weeks ago and we may be more on the same page than I originally thought:

http://thedispensaryonline.com/iradio/

The above links to a history of internet radio broadcasts for anyone interested in other conditions or health topics and are interested in natural therapies.

Going Naturopathic

We have an appointment with a naturopathic doctor this week for our son and his belly. We've been on the Specific Carb Diet for just over 3 months and though it seems to help moderate his symptoms, has not "cured" him symptomatically. In full disclosure, backers of the SCD diet state up front that it can take months to 2 years to see full benefit. We're convinced that diet has something to do with Crohn's symptoms, unlike 95% of the GI doctors out there, and will keep going on the diet unless things go really south or he has another hospitalization. Mentally, the diet is easier to cope with as a parent when compared to giving a 3 year-old immunosuppressive drugs. Heck, the swine flu that is going around right now might have easily killed our son if he was still on 6-MP.

We're going to see the naturopathic doc for help with the diet and more for some sort of confirmation of our experiences with it. We'll see. The dude is a bit eccentric and my analytic thought-process may need to take a back seat while talking to him. I hope he can help...