Food is NOT an Issue?!

What do you mean it’s not an issue?  How can food NOT be an issue?  For seven years, since my middle son was born, food has been The Only Issue of any Importance in our home.  For nearly six of those seven years, every meal we ate together in our home ended with someone screaming or crying or falling on the floor wailing.  Sometimes all three at once, and sometimes it was me.

There are two children in our home who have serious food intolerances:  no wheat, no milk for the two youngest.  And it took us nearly six years to figure this out with the middle one, so for nearly six years, he was in constant pain and misery, felt poisoned most of the time, was borderline malnourished, and generally hated food (hence, the mealtime screaming).

In fact, although his health has improved, Timothy still hates food.  It brings him no pleasure (unless it’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich), and is something to be struggled through in the most minute quantities possible, fighting a gag reflex most of the time, just so mom will get off his case.  Sometimes the struggle against the gag reflex is a losing one; I can’t even count the number of meals that have ended with me getting barfed on.

So, yes, food IS an issue.  A big one.

I finally came to my senses, however, and realized that it is an issue that doesn’t seem to be going away on its own, and I decided to take action.  So I made an appointment with a speech therapist.

Sounded strange to me, too, but we had used a speech therapist when Timothy was seven months old and needed to be taught to eat from a spoon with out throwing up.  (I told you food was an Issue.)  I expected the therapist to hear me out and tell me I needed to go somewhere else.

Imagine my drop-jaw astonishment when, after I ran through Timothy’s history, she smiled kindly and said, “This is not a big issue.  I know exactly what the problem is and I know exactly how to fix it.  No problem.  I work with these types of children all the time.”

“Uhnhgh??!”  Was my intelligent reply.

She went on to explain that she would do an evaluation to learn what types of flavors, textures, temperatures etc. on which part of the tongue stimulated Timothy’s gag reflex, and once she had that information, it would be a very straightforward process to design a treatment, and she expected that within a matter of a few short months at most, Timothy could be completely reformed.

“Uhnhgh?!!”  Was still all I could muster. 

In fact, that’s been all I could muster for the last week or so.  I took Timothy to the initial evaluation appointment on Friday and spoke with the therapist afterwards, and she was still quite positive that Timothy was an excellent candidate for ‘curing.’

For his part, Timothy loves the appointments because he gets out of school for an hour and a half and gets a lollipop at the end.  Little does he know that the lollipop itself is part of the treatment!

So, I’ve been burbling with joy for the past several days.  It seems that there really may be light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t an oncoming train.  Maybe food really ISN’T an issue!