Saturday, January 22, 2011

22 January 2011

T+494

Just checked at the supermarket and discovered that Stephanie can eat some varieties of Oreos too!  Even though they are labelled "Milk's Favourite Cookie", some (but not all) types of Oreos are dairy-free. Maybe it is because you are supposed to dunk them in milk.

Friday, January 21, 2011

21 January 2011

T+493

Today marks one year without a central line! It was taken out under emergency surgery on 21 January 2010 because it caused a serious infection which landed Jeremy in ICU.

We are thankful that all that remains of such a traumatic time is one little scar, and one very active little boy who has just finished a week-long holiday swimming program - something he was definitely not allowed to do with a central line.

Today was another first for him - the first time that he has tried Oreos, and he loved them!  We have gradually been introducing him to various dairy products, but the interesting thing is that he doesn't like the taste of most of them (eg. milk, yoghurt, icecream, soft cheese).  Perhaps this is because he still has his "old" tastebuds, although he has a new immune system.  So far, he likes tasty cheese and chocolate - and now Oreos!

He has also eaten foods which contain egg with no adverse reaction.  We will continue to try him out on such foods before we present him with an actual egg (fried or boiled) to taste.

Only one more week of the school holidays to go, before our little man starts Year One!

And only one and a half more weeks until his next bone marrow aspirate on 2 February 2011 ...

Thursday, January 6, 2011

6 January 2011

T+478

This morning Jeremy went to Australian Hearing Services for a checkup hearing test and adjustments to his hearing aids. It is good that Australian Hearing Services was able to do the same hearing test as the Audiology Department of the Children's Hospital - because this meant that we could cancel tomorrow's appointment with Audiology and spare Jeremy the frustration of having to do the same test twice in a row!

So the next time that Jeremy has to go to hospital will be on Wednesday 2 February 2011 for a bone marrow aspirate.

The BIG news of the day is that Jeremy can now have cow's milk!

Having waited in vain since July last year for the immunologist to contact us for challenge tests for his food allergies, we decided to run our own challenge test on Jeremy (as he had previously been to hospital for two such challenge tests in 2008). We were reasonably confident that he would have no allergic reaction, because both his blood tests and skin prick tests showed that he was no longer allergic to dairy. However, he was slowly introduced to cow's milk and he is very pleased with the results. We are thankful for this unexpected "side-effect" from his bone marrow transplant - a new bone marrow meant a new immune system!

We will now start to give him different dairy products - but very gradually and in very small amounts. Then we might plan to have our own challenge test for eggs (and maybe later, even nuts!).