Huffing and puffing and blood, oh my!

Most of you probably have heard all about this but..............

In an ongoing effort to whittle away at the power that asthma has over Jonas, his pulmonologist referred him to a GI guy.  The GI guy asked a couple leading questions, gave him a quick look and promptly ordered a few scary sounding tests with names as long as a charmer's snake.  

The first of these tests,  The Breath Hydrogen Test, was relatively harmless.  He had to fast for so many hours arrive in the morning, drink a sugar drink and then breathe into a bag. Over and over again at certain intervals.  So we entertained ourselves with whatever we could find.  Jonas mostly played GameBoy (strategically brought out only for appointments such as this... and the dentist).  Ryah bounced around from the computer to the boat, to the books, to the whine, and back again.  Elijah mostly played the computer.

I'll cut to the chase with the rest of the tests (and spare you the gory details).  Jonas has fructose intolerance (not to be confused with hereditary fructose intolerance).  This causes an overgrowth of bacteria in his gut, all kinds of intestinal problems, malnutrition, and lack of growth.  He has a very specific diet he needs to follow, and has grown a couple inches since he started it.   He is pleased as punch that it has helped his growth.  However, none of this has any direct relation to the asthma.   While it is back to the drawing board again with asthma, we are grateful that we figured out this problem while he still has a chance to grow!