Young George is just over one year old. For the past few months he has had an increasingly healthy appetite for solids and is visibly thriving. Or so he was until a few weeks ago. After a couple of weeks of gradual loss of appetite he suddenly stopped eating altogether, and mum and dad began to worry. After three days of nothing but fluids, and diminishing demand even for these, coupled with that most alarming symptom of all, a complete refusal to eat chocolate*, he had put the wind up them both and so they attended, with a still happy and smiling young George in tow.
So far, despite his total lack of enthusiasm for solids the lad was holding his own pretty well, with no signs of rapid weight loss and no real dehydration. He was vomiting after all solids though, and so had really given up trying, and so long as mum and dad allowed him not to eat he was happy, only becoming fractious when they tried to make him.
His tummy was quite soft and not at all tender. There was no worry about constipation or diarrhoea, and on the day I examined him my tummy was gurgling more than his… one of us was definitely in need of chocolate!
Overall he really didn’t seem too bad, but mum and dad were not going to take happily to this suggestion. In reality it appeared little George was suffering a bit of “reflux” with acid flowing backwards from the stomach into the lower reaches of the oesophagus causing heartburn and hence vomiting.
After some discussion his worried parents agreed to my evidently insane suggestion that we try spiking his bottles with an antacid preparation that just might do the trick, before we considered referring him on to the paediatricians. It helped a bit that I have looked after mum since she was little older that her son is now, so with a slight reluctance she and her husband agreed to try my alchemy for a week or so before pressing the panic button.
Two weeks on they came back, all three beaming contentedly, to request some more sachets of the antacid. Young George is back wolfing down everything that’s put in front of him, and most particularly he’s back on the chocolate. There can be no better sign that a toddler is on the mend.
*Regular readers will already be aware that this writer believes Chocolate worthy of it’s own food group and of that food group’s obvious preeminence over all the others.**
** except perhaps the Vodka / Bourbon group that is….
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8 comments:
Good Rx, Dr Jest. You are right about the chocolate as a food group. I keep trying to use that argument........
Umm, how about the Noilly Prat food group?
Nice to see you posting again Dr J, hope all is well in Ambridge?
Chocolate is more than just a food group it's an essential element of life!
Bendy Girl
Ooh. I had a chocolate revelation a couple of days ago - word was on the street that Swiss kiosks are now stocking Cadbury's Crunchie Bars. Hadn't had one since I was a teenager, so hot-footed it to the nearest railway station and bought two.
Mountain Man bit, chewed and pulled a funny face (he's so Swiss-like and polite and I'd raved about said chocolate product). Being a comparatively uninhibited former Northern lass, I said "Yuck!" Sickly-sweet, they were, and the reality certainly didn't live up to the memory. It brought home to me that your palate is (re-)conditioned to a great extent by the food available in the culture you live in.
Glad little George is back on the chocs. :-)
o xxx
elaine-- Well now you can tell 'em all it's a scientific fact backed up by medical evidence, er.... well, near enough. As for the Noilly Prat I guess it's a subgroup of the V / B group.
bendy girl-- we've had sun two days in a row here, so I take it the world's probably about to end. I'm battening down the hatches and expecting the rain of frogs and what not any moment.
"Chocolate is more than just a food group it's an essential element of life!"
There's an entire philosophy in a single sentence right there! I couldn't agree more.
orchidea-- there's something very wrong about trying to export Crunchie bars to the spiritual home of chocolate. Also our palates do refine as we grow...
Talking of chocolate do they still make "Frigor"? One of the highlights of the Jest family christmasses of my long lost youth were the visits to Granny and her treasure chest of red wrapped, silver foiled squares of heaven.
Damn. Now I've gone and drooled all over the keys ;-).
Of course they still make Frigor - a Swiss institution. Would you like me to send you some?
(sounds a bit indecent, doesn't it - Frigor - or is it only me?)
A new keyboard won't set you back much these days... ;-)
orchidea-- what a temptress you truly are dear lady. Sadly I must decline your overly generous offer. I would have a hard job explaining where I came by such riches without blowing my secret identitiy.
I wonder if they (Herren Lindt und Sprungli iirc?) do internet sales... I'll be off to google them directly.
And yes to an older anglophone ear the name does conjure some doubtless unintended associations ;-)
And then good old Google shows it's Cailler Nestle. Still seems a festive treat may be on the cards this year at Jest Acres!
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