Update on Zane

Zane had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Crisp (his neurologist) on Monday. I am pleased to report that for the first time since starting the diet, we have seen some growth with Zane. In the 3 months since his last appointment he has grown about 2 cm in height and nearly 2 pounds in weight. I attribute that to his increase in calories by 72/day that we began in August. We knew that slow or no growth would be a side effect of the diet, so we are happy to take what we can get.

We also saw his dietitian, Amy, while we were there. She still believes we are on track to change his ratio again in February, which will put him at 2.5:1. He began the diet and went the whole first year at 4:1. He is currently at 3:1. After 3 months at 2.5:1 he will switch to 2:1 and is still set to be completely off the diet in August. Basically what that boils down to is that we will be increasing his caloric intake mostly in the form of carbs every 3 months, until he is weaned from the diet.

I also brought along a sugar-free pancake mix I found at the commissary for Amy to look at. She has since entered it into the database and I can start monkeying around with a recipe that will hopefully taste good to Zane. I know pancakes are definitely on his list of things to eat as soon as he's able. So hopefully I can come up with something so he doesn't have to wait until August to have them.

In January Zane will have a 24 hour EEG at my request. I noticed one night during a sleepover Saturday that his arm was twitching or jerking rather, for a few seconds. It looked a little bit too seizure-like to be ignored. And then I got to thinking about the fact that he hasn't fallen asleep during any of his 4 hour EEG's since being on the diet. Those have all come back normal but what if something is going on only while he's sleeping? Hopefully it will come back normal and I'll have some peace of mind. It will actually be an ambulatory EEG which means he will go in the morning of the 5th to get his "robot hair" (as we like to call it). All the wires plug into a little box that can be carried around in a bag or maybe it will be a fanny-pack sort of thing. Then he will come home and "wear it" for 24 hours and I'll take him back on the 6th to be disconnected. No hospital stay required. How awesome is that?!?!?!

I feel compelled to re-iterate how lucky we are to have such a great doctor and dietitian on our team. I'm just so thankful that we were in the right place at the right time. Know what I mean?