OIT Update: Stomach Trouble

E’s oral immunotherapy (OIT) for milk is going well but we’ve had a few bumps.  The week after the change to daylight savings E complained about a stomach ache after dosing in the morning.  I texted the on-call Dr. and he said to give him some prescription Zantac which seemed to resolve things.

His stomach hurt 2 or 3 more mornings that week.  Once his stomach was still churning when our carpool came by to take him to school so I sent them on and kept E home for another hour to see if it resolved.  It did so I took him to school, but I admit I was a little nervous until I picked him up and could keep an eye on him myself.

One other day he said his stomach hurt but begged not to take the Zantac because it tasted so bad.  He said he’d throw up if I made him take it and yep, he threw up almost making it all the way to the trash can.

The odd thing was that he didn’t have any stomach issues when he dosed in the evening.  Our doctor said that eating too soon after waking up may be making E nauseated and suggested waking E up earlier before feeding him breakfast.

It was already hard to get E out of bed at 6:15 so the idea of waking him up even earlier was daunting.  But I told him that if he gets out of bed quickly he can play computer games for 15 minutes while I make his breakfast.  It has worked!  Since he started getting up earlier before eating breakfast his stomach hasn’t bothered him.  Hooray for the healing power of computer games 😉

So we are still chugging along.  Right now E’s at 8mL (a little over 1 1/2 teaspoons) of whole milk twice a day.  If other issues come up it may affect things but right now we’re on track for E to graduate from milk OIT in July.