Distraught Irish mum reveals son, 3, has to survive on formula and one potato waffle a day due to crippling undiagnosed digestive condition
Little Matthew O’Donovan suffers from an unknown illness which leaves him with bloody stools and in agonising pain every time he eats
A DISTRAUGHT mum has told how her three-year-old son has to survive on formula and one potato waffle per day as a result of a crippling undiagnosed digestive condition.
Little Matthew O’Donovan suffers from an unknown illness which leaves him with bloody stools and in agonising pain every time he eats.
After several food trials, mum Caroline found that the only thing Matthew can eat without feeling ill is a potato waffle.
But after three years battling the horrific illness, Matthew still hasn’t been diagnosed.
Caroline said: “Every time Matthew eats, his body attacks itself. Because he’s not diagnosed, we don’t know what’s wrong with him yet. All he can have is one waffle a day, and he’d have seven or eight bottles of dairy free formula.
“If he eats anything else his stomach gets upset, but he also gets a temperature. He’ll usually end up getting tonsillitis and bloody stools.”
Despite being able to eat waffles, Matthew cannot eat potatoes in their true form.
She said: “He can only tolerate waffles because they’re heat treated. They go through a process which kills off the protein. So if we cook a potato from scratch, he can’t tolerate it because it’s too heavy.”
Matthew needs an endoscopy and colonoscopy to figure out what’s wrong with his gut, but wait lists in Crumlin Hospital are between 12 and 18 months.
Desperate for a cure, Caroline and her husband Patrick regularly fly Matthew over to the UK where doctors have been trying to discover the cause.
And the couple, who also have a four-month-old daughter Clodagh, have already spent €20,000 on getting treatment for Matthew abroad.
STILL NO DIAGNOSIS
Caroline says Matthew has been bravely managing his condition since birth. But now that he’s getting older, it’s getting harder with birthday parties and social gatherings becoming more frequent.
She said: “He’s three now and we’re thinking, what do we give him for his birthday party, because kids eats sweets and he can’t eat them. We don’t bring him to birthday parties or if we do, we plan ahead.
“Two weeks ago, it was his cousin’s party, and I called the play centre and they made up the waffles for him, it was just lovely for him to have that five to ten minutes sitting down and eating with the rest of the kids.”
Caroline says it’s easier to avoid eating out altogether. And they’ve stopped bringing him to play centres because he gets upset when he can’t eat what other kids are having.
She and her husband also have to eat in secret to prevent their son from getting upset.
As a result of not eating, Matthew’s immune system is very low and he is deficient in several important vitamins.
MOST READ IN FABULOUS
Caroline said: “He’s very low in energy now and he gets so tired so easily. When he gets sick it takes him longer to fight it off because his immune system is so low.”
Fed up of waiting on a diagnosis here, Caroline and her husband will travel to the UK once again to undergo scopes which they hope will help determine Matthew’s condition.
Caroline said: “Even though we know it will take up a while to build up the tolerance for various foods once they find out what’s wrong, we just hope that he can eat something else for Christmas dinner next year other than waffles because that’s all he ate this year.”
