No Fruit. Seriously.

The latest in the "let's give Bryce yet another diagnosis" quest is that while his labs came back negative for parasites, one test they ran came up elevated. The plan for this little gem is a doozy. A real doozy.

Something called "reducing substances" is the offender in the samples they tested. It means Bryce is a good candidate for something called a carbohydrate malabsorption problem. The initial action the Pediatric GI office wants us to take is to keep Bryce on the horrible Flagyl that he's been taking (in case he's got an overgrowth of bad bacteria in places they shouldn't be) and stop feeding him juice.

Well, Bryce doesn't drink juice. He only drinks water or soy baby formula. So then they tell me to just stop feeding him carbohydrates. Seriously? No carbohydrates? So I'm supposed to put my 19 month old food allergic child who doesn't self feed on the Atkins diet? Only he can't have any dairy, just meat. Oh, and vegetables.

I must've sounded a bit, ah, rude as I asked for specifics. Like exactly how much carbs was I to cut out? All carbs? Could he eat any carbs? Simple sugars? Complex carbs? Was there a gram number I was to target? The nurse on the phone giving me the instruction to eliminate Bryce's carbs couldn't answer that. She needed to talk to someone else & call me back.

She did call back. The answer? "Just don't give him any FRUIT." None? At all? For how long? (no answer for the "how long"). What do I feed him? This person has no answers. The kicker in all of this is that Bryce, literally JUST THIS WEEK has eaten-on his own-about 6 bites of pears. Picked them up, put them in his mouth and swallowed them. So all that progress will come to a grinding halt when we do stop giving him the fruit.

Brad and I are leery of these "let's try this" approaches that these Drs keep taking. They don't know for sure that this food allergic baby who hardly eats actually HAS this disorder. But they're willing to wager his calories and vitamin needs on it. They don't care that we're going to feeding therapy for an evaluation tomorrow because that horrible Flagyl has affected what he will eat. They don't care that he has such a limited amount of things that he WILL eat in one form or another.

It's just "No fruit. Seriously."