No I CAN'T -- Yes, You CAN - Building Your Learning Disabled Child's Self Esteem

Reading has always been a struggle for Madison.  It has taken a long time, has been challenging to figure out words, and she just plain has not liked it.  This is all related to her Visual Processing Disorder.  In order to help her with this she has endured Vision Therapy for 2 years--the problem is, she does not recognize the progress she has made.  She has programmed herself to believe that reading is difficult, and will be difficult, regardless of the gains she has made over the past couple of years.  So the question is, how do we reprogram our children to believe that they CAN do something that has been forever difficult and challenging to them?  How do we encourage them to take the risk to forge ahead?  How do we get them to ignore that "bully" in their mind telling them "this has always been difficult, therefor I still can't do it and I don't want to try...I'm just going to fail".

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Andrew Update: Biopsy and Ph Probe Results

We received Andrew's results from his endoscopy/biopsy and ph probe  a couple of weeks ago, but  things have been crazy so I haven't had a chance to post the results.  Let me start by giving a brief review of his treatment history to this point.  When he was diagnosed at age 3 he was put on a high dose of systemic steroids which did not help.  Over the next few years he was on and off swallowed steroids with no success as well.  At that time we changed GI's and he had him patch tested.  He started an elimination diet of 5 foods and his Eos count went up.  He was then patch tested again at a different clinic, was taken off 13 foods, and again his Eos count went up.  At that point we put him on an elemental only diet (Neocate Splash) for 8 weeks.  When he was scoped after those 8 weeks there were so many eos phf they couldn't count them.  So then we decided to try a round of high dose steroids while he was also on the elemental diet.  So now for the results....

The endoscopy showed that there is still furrowing and irritation, but no visible "white patches".  The biopsy results showed that he is in histologic remission (5 eos/phf, the first time he has ever been in remission).  The Ph probe showed that he has excessive reflux which is all acidic, apparently the cause of irritation in the esophagus.  So what about the treatment?  Our doctor explained to us the importance of getting Andrew's reflux under control first.  So he will be going from 20 mg of prilosec 1x/day to 40mg 2x/day.  Pretty big jump.  Next we need to taper him off the high dose steroids.  This process takes 4 weeks.  After he is weaned off the steroids, we will see if he can maintain remission off the steroids, but still on the elemental only diet for at least 3 weeks.  The doctor that our GI is consulting with suggests that we have Andrew scoped again after this period to see if he has maintained remission.  Our GI feels that we could go on symptoms, and if he doesn't have any symptoms after the 3 weeks, we could then begin to trial a food.  So that is the treatment plan.

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