update series: the deception

Well, it is my duty to write updates on our IBD experience. And a lot of time and drama has ensued since my last post. I will catch up in a series of posts which hopefully capture our experience chronologically.

The first day of our steroids resulted in solid poop. And we also, that day, went back to the basic elimination diet with the intent of various food introduction while keeping vegan. And the other important piece of information is that I, dad, was in charge of morning medications, which included the daily steroids.

Well, I was so tickled at that immediate response, and as I reported, uncomfortable about the steroids, that the next day I gave him 4.5 ml instead of 5ml to see if we could tell a difference. And day 2, also nothing but a nice solid poop in the evening. So day 3, I gave him only 4ml. Solid poop. On day 4 I realized that from then on I was going to be giving him only a little steroids, and not enough to be very significant. But I decided to go ahead and see if his reaction changed. And it didn't. For the next few days I kept reducing it to nothing at all, and meanwhile Isaac's poop was nice and healthy.

This was all good and well, except that I hadn't consulted with the doctor, or even Isaac's mom. So you can imagine how upset she was when about 12 days later I broke her the news. I had to tell her, because I was going somewhere and she was going to be giving him his morning medications, and I didn't want her to just give him full doses of steroids for no good reason. Well, she flipped out, and then I felt so sheepish I called the doctor's office to confess and see if they wanted to advise us differently.

Since Isaac's stool was nice and healthy they said not to worry about anything until our next doctor's appointment which was coming right up.

I will reiterate that this whole ordeal has been quite a strain for Bonnie and me. We keep reminding ourselves that we both want the same thing, but it is clear that I don't really trust conventional health care (pharmaceuticals, mainly) to get us to that point and Bonnie wants to trust it. So we butt heads about methods. However, let me say, it wasn't very good of me to pull what I pulled. What would have been better is clear communication with lots of persuasive reasoning, followed by an informed consensus between my wife, me, and the doctor.

Also in this span of time, Isaac went to his grandparents. And chomped on some bacon and I don't know what else, but I know that a vegan diet doesn't follow him around very well unless we're at home.