It's just a milk allergy...

Shortly after Josh turned 2 years old, he started having a lot of diarrhea, which then turned into a lot of diarrhea and blood. Our pediatrician blew it off to a "milk allergy" and told me to just remove milk from his diet. He didn't do any blood work, but I was a new Mom, and I trusted that a DOCTOR knew what he was doing, so I followed his orders. I removed all milk, yet nothing changed. I'd call the Doctor and he'd tell me to be more NEUROTIC about keeping milk out of his diet..... After 8 months, I once again called the Doctor and insisted that he send us to a specialist. He then gave us a referral to a Gastroenterologist at Boston Children's Hospital.

At our first appointment with the GI doctor, she listened to his symptoms and assured us it was probably just a polyp or something minor. She left the room to get a stool collection kit for us.... when she saw what his stool looked like, she asked if it always looked like that. I said yes. Then I could tell that her face changed and that this was no longer something minor. She called us that night and said she wanted him admitted into Children's Hospital the next morning for a colonoscopy and endoscopy... she was concerned that he might have Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's Disease.

I cried and I packed.

I remember snippets of our 5 days in the hospital.

I remember that since he was admitted so suddenly that there was no time to do a "cleanse" before hand, so they had to put a tube up his nose and down into his stomach so they could directly pump in the cleansing fluids. I remember him being held down on the table while they put the tube in his nose.... him looking at me with a look of panic, while screaming..... I remember feeling SO much guilt. I wanted to grab him and run home.

But I couldn't.

He endured IVs, loads of tests and in the end on his 3rd birthday was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis.

He was put on Prednisone and Sulfasalazine......

and the journey began.......

xo

Here we go...

I'm not really sure why it's taken me so long to start a blog dedicated to our journey with IBD.

Recently, I've been doing a lot of blog reading about Crohn's Disease and diet and realized... hey, I wonder if OUR journey might help someone else. So here I am.

I'll go into more details in another post, but wanted to give an initial "hello" first.

My main plan for the blog is to chronicle our journey with trying out a gluten-free diet, so see if it helps with his symptoms, but I'm sure it will end up being a good mish most of ramblings, so be forewarned. :P

Thank you for reading!

xo

Welcome!

Excuse the dust while I get this puppy set up! Blogger has been wonky today, so trying to get things squared away now...

Stay tuned!

xo