What do I feed this kid?!

It seemed daunting way back when, but now it feels pretty darn normal to deal with the SC diet full-time. Here's today's menu:

Breakast: Peanut butter smoothie, made with PB, frozen banana, honey, apple cider and homemade yogurt (more about that later!)
Baked apples sauteed in butter and honey

Snack: poached egg

Lunch: breakfast redux (her choice)

Snack: umm, I can't remember, but I'm sure there was one

Dinner: artichoke with melted butter
organic broccoli
Taco Fillings (corn or flour tortillas are not allowed on the diet, so we came up with the idea of eating just the fillings. This is THE dinner that most feels like old times for all of us).

So we ate refried beans (red beans and black are okay on the diet, as long as they've been soaked overnight and then cooked for at least two hours. True confession: I know that I'd been a vegetarian for, well, forever, before this, but I had never cooked beans from scratch before--only used canned). Ate the beans with lettuce and shredded cheese. I've also become creative and begun to make "cheese tortillas" by melting cheese in a nonstip pan and then letting it get cool enough to lift out in one piece and roll. THAT, my friend, is a triumph of creativity over restriction :)

Dessert: homemade apple fruit roll and dehydrated orange slices.

I also made apple sauce, since Chana has trouble swallowing pills, but can do it with the pills mixed in apple sauce.

Food appliances I've used today:
Foley Food mill (for the apple sauce)
blender (twice. Once for the peanut butter smoothie and once for a soy butter one that Penina could eat).
immersion blender (for the refried beans)
yogurt maker (for the yogurt :))
dehydrator (for the fruit roll [made by dehydrating apple sauce. Came out great! Only problem is that it's like 9 hours since I started making the apple sauce] and the oranges)

I'm beginning to see why I'm so tired at night. And why I need help keeping my house from spiraling into utter chaos. And....

And Yet Another Follow-Up....

The upshot of all the "is it a flare or isn't it" is that it was/is, but is not a crazy, out-of-control one. I am reminded of being in nursing school and being told repeatedly to "trust the mom". That is definitely born out in this case, since the clinical evidence of Chana's labs being off is only now coming out, several weeks after I called and said, "I think she's having a flare".

I spoke with Chana's doctor 1.5 weeks ago when he called to tell me that one of her inflammation markers was very high (17.7 for C-reactive protein, when normal is less than 1). So now, instead of being on one pill a day, she's on 6 (well, 7 if we count the iron).

Labs get drawn again tomorrow, so, hopefully, we'll find out good news at her next appt. on Thursday. She seems totally back to normal, and I'm hoping we can ditch the extra meds ASAP.

Yeah...What She Said

PB comes into the kitchen, crying about her big sisters' treament of her:
"They're outcluding me!"

A follow-up

Weird what happens when one comes back and revisits old posts. I didn't even recall putting the "flare" post on here.

So here's what happened: Chana had labs drawn and....they were fine (whew) and the dr. said "go to Florida!". Cutting out the nuts and seeds did seem to be a big help, as her stomach eventually stopped hurting so much (oh yeah, she also went back on super-duper antacid, so now, should she so desire, I suppose she really could "eat the whole thing" like those old commercials used to say). Her iron count was still low, but the two main markers of inflammation were okay.

Had more blod drawn last week, and the iron count was eek-scary lower (add in iron pill [which, since it's very difficult to digest, is technically a no-no on the diet, which is why we didn't start it earlier]), and one of the inflammatory markers is creeping up. STOP!!!! Do not increase! Do not give my child a flare. Do not show even an inkling of my child having a flare.

Did I mention that the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) sent both Chana and me separate fundraising letters today?! I'm totally disgusted. Chana's letter was already in the recycle pile when I fished it out. I want to know from them how they got her name. Does Mass General sell the names of the newly-diagnosed?! It's bad enough that when Chana was in the hospital, the Clinical Nurse Specialist (which is technically what I am, so I really wanted to like this woman) handed me this huge pile of info from CCFA including what felt like numerous membership appeals and donation opportunities. I didn't join. (Which leads to the question of why *I* am getting these letters as well, but I don't feel anywhere near as outraged about my getting them as I do my 9 year-old). And, yes, there is probably a bit of denial mixed in to these feelings....

I hate Crohn's disease :(