As most of you know Cyler has an aversion to chewing his food. He was fortunately able to lose the feeding tube when he was five years old due to taking all of his diet by mouth. He really eats like a champ...he just won't chew.
Approximately 2 months ago we had an GI appointment and instead of seeing
our regular GI physician we ended up with an different one. One who has never seen Cyler before. He gave Cyler the diagnosis of Failure To Thrive. This diagnosis breaks my heart and I am sure I am not alone in that. Anyway, he wanted Cyler to add 2 pediasure drinks a day in addition to his regular diet and come back in 2 months for a re-check. We found out relatively quickly that pediasure wasn't going to work. Cyler threw up every bit of the stuff.
We had to think of something and fast. We decided to make super smoothies once per day and add extra calories and variety to his diet. So he is drinking 2 carnations in the morning and his oatmeal has coconut oil, flax seed, and cream in it. We have been adding extra calories whenever we can. Anyway, we were met with a major bump in the road. Cyler ended up with a nasty upper respiratory infection that lasted about 2 weeks and included 10 days of eating AND drinking very little. We were forcing fluids and he was on 2 antibiotics and ended up with an earache to boot.
So fast forward to our followup appointment and Cyler has only maintained his weight. Again the appointment was with someone totally different. This time it was with a very nice ARNP who decided that we needed to do a endoscopy to see why he isn't gaining. Though, we agree that it isn't a bad idea to look deeper into the reason for the weight issue, we weren't 100% comfortable with the timing or urgency. The ARNP further told us not to try anything else until after the scope and this made us even more uncomfortable.
We reached out to Cyler's pediatrician and voiced our concerns. She agreed that it wouldn't be unreasonable to try a few more things and wait a few more months before doing any procedure, especially since he had been sick for a few weeks. She also added that she would like us to make sure we meet with his primary GI physician face to face prior to scheduling any kind of procedures.
So here we are! We have a couple of months to try and put some weight on this kind and schedule an appointment with his regular GI physician. At that point if we haven't gained enough, we will revisit the need for the endoscopy with his doctor.
