Fructose update

What's new?

On Monday, I met with a nice lady named Suzanne, who has a five year old daughter with fructose malabsorption, just like Anthony. Our pediatrician put us in touch with her. She is a fantastic, funny lady, and she's incredibly helpful. Her daughter was diagnosed six months ago and they have a decent routine now where her daughter doesn't have any tummy issues most days. We learned from Suzanne that some things we thought were safe (some fruit juices, garlic, carrots), could be a real problem. We also learned that honey is pretty much the worst possible thing that Anthony could ever have. I was thankful to find out all of these new things and can't wait to meet with Suzanne again.

Since then, I've noticed things that I didn't before. We tried a small amount of orange juice the other night, and it was a disaster. We noticed that even a tiny bit of ketchup from Wendy's (which has high fructose corn syrup), or too many gluten-free cookies (too much sucrose, or table sugar, which makes the entire load of fructose too high) makes our guy's tummy hurt. We are absolutely ecstatic to find out that brown sugar is a-okay, as are chocolates, Smarties and Pixy Sticks, Anthony's favorites (yay!!!).

Just reading this blog post, you're all probably scratching your heads going, "How do you handle it?" I think, if I hadn't had the experience with the tummy aches myself, and hadn't gone through the dairy allergy with Anthony, or the gluten issues with myself, I would probably be sobbing during most trips to the store. The few times we've ventured down the cereal and fruit snacks/juice aisle, I've felt sadness, knowing he's not a normal kid anymore. But that's quickly replaced with joy, knowing our once very sick little boy feels great almost all of the time and he doesn't have some awful disease.

We'll update soon with more information as we know it.