life after roids

Well, we're still in the "weaning off" stage of discontinuing six weeks of full dose prednisolone for Isaac's UC. For a two and a half year old, parents are bound to experience mood changes and independence--a particular vigor of life which often leaves parents wringing their hands for the "terrible twos" to pass. Well, especially the last few weeks left us wringing our hands with little Isaac.

The best anecdote was when Bonnie listed off half a dozen bizarre scenarios which included the slinging of toilet water, climbing on top of the TV, jumping off the couch, bouncing everywhere like a bunny, getting into this or getting into that. By and large, it wasn't anything different from any run of the mill experience with a two year old. Then, she clarified, however, at the end of the list, that it was merely the antics of one day. Many of you who have had kids can understand, I know. Just string all of those such days together with no naps for a few weeks and then I think you've got it.

Now that we've cut back on the steroids, he is napping again and he seems to have his regular self back, already. You know from my writing that I was a little anxious about the steroids, so I am relieved to see that he seems to be getting back to normal just fine. Although I do still await what the next few weeks will bring, and of course I hope he has no long-term ill effects.

Bowel-wise, we're all good. From our previous experience, it's going to be hard to convince me that the steroids are necessary. The science of it goes like this. At our last check up, when we were given the clear to reduce the steroid dosage, they took no blood work. The results they gave us that day were from the previous bloodwork three weeks ago. In that time, we saw improvement, but now we have no baseline for what "good" is really like. We will see the doctor in another month (six weeks from the last appointment) though so hopefully Isaac will still be doing just fine. I am pretty optimistic about the probiotics, which seem to be getting the best and surest results. Although, like I've written about before--it's so hard to tell what is doing what since we're doing a lot all at once.

This isn't the first time I've written this, but we suspect cow's milk triggers reactions--less than soy but greater than any other thing we've identified as far as we can tell.

I'm pretty comfortable with our diet and Isaac. We eat omnivorously on Wednesdays, vegetarian on days that begin with T, and vegan on the other days.

We have wanted to get more involved with families around Houston who cope with IBD, but so far we haven't done any of that. Perhaps as we get settled into our house and this side of town we'll be more on top of social networking. Our goal at this point is to keep on top of intake and output and register any fluctations, keep up on the anti-inflammatory medicine (hopefully get him switched to non-antibacterial pills instead of the antibacterial liquid form), stay faithful with the probiotics and see if we can't keep his condition stable for a long a time as possible. Being involved with other families with similar goals would probably help.