Allergic to food: Digestive disorder leads to child's feeding tube

She'd always been an active child despite the condition and she remains so. Her mom said she was depressed when she first started on the feeding tube. She's doing better now and has even gained 5 pounds, but she's still a very light 45 pounds, small for a third grader.

And she misses food. By mouth she gets only ice and sugar water. The hope is that the feeding-tube formula will allow the symptoms to back off, the eosinophils will go down in number and she can be reintroduced to foods, "one at a time, like a baby," Tammy Zundel says.

And it does mean she gets nutrition. Since she does much of her feeding as she sleeps, there's less disruption in her life. She's in school, although she's not socializing like she used to," her mom says. "The nose tube bothers her."

But the other children are generally very accepting. When she got the tube, her parents went with her to school for a "little show and tell about what it was and why she doesn't drink the formula. It tastes so nasty."

The fact that she's a sunny child helps immeasurably, her mom says.

The formula is expensive, though, and Dallyn's employer, RH Donnelly, has yet to reach an agreement with its insurance company to allow coverage of it.

As for Preston, the condition is recent. Last summer, he had cryptosporidium twice and they think it "kick-started" it as the eosinophils rush to attack the parasite. When the parasite was gone, they remained in high numbers, something that also reportedly happens sometimes with other conditions, including mononucleosis.

He can no longer have milk "in any way, shape or form." Citrus is out. He pays for it, in great pain, a couple of days later.

The Zundels are starting a support group for people with eosinophilic conditions. They plan an April 29 meeting at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, 5121 S. Cottonwood, in the Doty Education Building east conference room.

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E-mail: lois@desnews.com