My 8yo son's Crohn's journey

In October of 2011 our son, born in December of 2004, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease.  Yeah, it threw us for a loop.

I'm going to make this a short story.  I could go into great detail, but I won't for now.  We ended up putting him on Mercaptopurine (25mg daily) and the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet).  I learned about the SCD diet from friends on Facebook who led me to read the book, "Breaking The Vicious Cycle."  He has been symptom free for about 6 months.  His only symptom since December of 2011 has been loose stools.  That ended when I started feeding him (and the rest of our family) the SCD yogurt and the SCD Multivitamins.  He hasn't had any pain since I put him on the diet in November of 2011.  I am convinced that this diet has helped to heal my son.  He is in remission!  Whenever I have slipped and let him have something, like chicken nuggets from McDonalds, he has pain and sometimes vomiting.  Now that he IS healed (as far as I can tell...next month's scope should show more evidence of this), I do allow a taste here or there or something.  For instance, he had a piece of birthday cake (very small piece) on his 2yo brother's birthday.  I keep an eye on his stools when I do this, as this seems to be a good indicator on whether or not something is messing with him.


Next month (April) we are going to get him scoped again to see if everything is going as well as we think it is.  His doctor will then decide if he can go on a medication with fewer side effects.  Mercaptopurine can reduce bone marrow quality with prolonged use, and the chance of getting Leukemia goes up a bit as well.  I'm not comfortable with that.

I'm going to share things in this section of my blog that have helped me learn all I can about keeping my son and my whole family's gut more healthy.  Please know, I do allow "junk food" (aka processed) to be prepared and served in my family on occasion.  However, we have made many changes.  In other words, I'm not perfect at this.  I am very strict with keeping my 8yo on the SCD diet, but not as strict with the other members of my family.

Feel free to ask me any questions!  I'm happy to help.