Hi there,

We visited the gastro dr. yesterday to discuss Cody's all night gas pain.  So we tried laxatives, sennacot, activated charcoal, garlic, gas X, mylanta, milk of magnesia.....on and on and on.  I recently tried digestive enymes too and will continue that.  But the Dr. suggest putting Cody on a liquid diet for 2-3 weeks because (since none of the other measures worked) he suspects it may be an issue of Cody not chewing his food enough.  If the gas pain goes away once he has no more huge unchewed bites to digest, it will tell us a lot.  Then we can get a baseline and add foods that are bulkier in texture and see where the line is - where the gas creeps back in.  That's the consistency we would stick with.  I think it's a good plan.  Clearly Cody has dysmotility in the gut - it's just a matter of what there is to do for him.  The only real drug to help with that is Reglan which is contraindicated with seizure kids. So I'm going to consult with the nutritionist and try to come up with a liquid diet that will be nutritious enough for him.  I'm not sure how Cody will react to not being able to chew.  But I know that if he finally got some sleep, he'd react better to everything!

We also adjusted his VNS yesterday.  He's reached the "target" for ramping it up.  Now we begin to play with "frequency" of pulses.  After that you can also tinker with "bandwidth" of pulses.  that's why it takes 18 months to really explore the VNS's efficacy.  There's lots to tamper with.

So that's the latest from our camp!  Hope you are all swell!  With love, Shawna