Today is the day we are finally going to figure out if my daughter has fructose malabsorpti0n issues. In a way, I hope she does. In a way, I hope she doesn’t.
If she does – it will answer a lot of questions about why she is always bloated, gassy and spends SO much time in the bathroom. If she doesn’t, at least we don’t have to deal with the crazy diet for those with fructose malabsorption issues.
Turns out she does have fructose malabsorption issues. When she was preparing for the test I made some great foods – chicken soup and avocado tuna salad.
When she went to the hospital for the test she was so hungry. They couldn’t see her until noon and she was not a happy camper. She marched into the GI Lab, blew into the machine so they had a baseline of her system. I crossed my fingers that whatever I fed her the day before didn’t have too much fiber or sugar. I swear I read about 10 different articles on what to eat before the test and they all had different things you can eat. I didn’t realize that my entire journey with this syndrome would be that way – lots of conflicting and confusing information.
Then she drank the fructose drink, waited 15 minutes and blew into the tube again. BINGO – the first blow was off the charts. The good news was that we didn’t have to sit there for 3 hours. Of course, my phone was dying, I didn’t have a charger, no books or magazines and we were both really hungry…
The test requires that you have at least 1 hour of readings so she blew in 4 more times and we happily left the hospital to try and navigate a fructose free lunch.
We stopped at a diner for a burger. I thought this would be easy since she could have protein without a problem and I wasn’t quite sure what else was allowed and what was not. Of course, the waiter thought she was crazy when she didn’t want bread or cheese with her burger (she is also gluten and dairy free), she had a fit when she realized that ketchup can contain corn starch and even the pickles probably contained sugar. We weren’t sure what to do about the fries yet so she had fries, an iced tea and a plain burger.
No bloating, no stomach pain and our journey began…
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