Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The boy who is allergic to almost EVERY food

Tyler Savage: he is fed through a tube in his stomach
A boy of 12 suffers from so many allergies that he is able to eat only five foods.
Tyler Savage is violently ill every time he is given dishes containing dairy products or wheat, gluten, eggs, lactose and soya.
The sole foods he is allowed are chicken, carrots, grapes, potatoes and apples.
To help him survive, minerals and vitamins are pumped directly into his stomach through a tube.
Tyler started to fall ill at the age of six when even a morsel of food would leave him writhing in agony from sickness and diarrhea.
His mother, Lynne Savage, 43, said: "We asked for help but kept being told that he was suffering from a stomach infection. As a result his weight dropped drastically.
"He ran out of energy really quickly and couldn't do the things other children were doing. He just seemed to be getting worse and worse.
"It's been a real struggle. We didn't know what to do."
Tyler - from Earls Colne in Essex - was seen by a pediatrician at Chelmsford's St John's Hospital and had his appendix removed in December 2005.
Although the operation was a success it failed to solve the problem and he was referred to Colchester General Hospital for further tests and treatment.
That shed no light on the mystery illness and in April last year Tyler was sent to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for checks on his stomach and bowels.
The tests led to a diagnosis of eosinophilic enteropathy, a rare and condition in which the intestines produce too many white blood cells.
These act as a miniature immune system and attack food passing through the gut to the stomach.
The condition saw Tyler's weight drop to barely three stone.
"He was becoming malnourished," said Mrs Savage, a married mother-of-three and housewife.
At first, Tyler was fitted with a nose tube to help get food direct to his stomach, bypassing the rogue blood cells in his gut.
Then, this May, he had a tube inserted into his stomach allowing him to be fed for up to ten hours through the night.
"Even though this will continue for the foreseeable future, it is a godsend," said Mrs. Savage.
"Last year he was only at school for about ten days, but in the first two weeks of this new term he's only missed one day.
"We've got a long way to go but at least we're now getting some answers."
In the day, Tyler, whose father, David, 60, is an engineer, can eat the five foods he is not allergic to.

A Field of Pink




The truck that didn’t make it under the bridge.

The driver of a tractor trailer found herself jammed up underneath a railroad bridge on Monday morning.
Stella Trent was driving eastbound just after 10 a.m. when she attempted to drive under the bridge, according to Greensboro police and the company that owns the truck.

The truck was 18 inches taller then the bridge's clearance. The truck was 13 feet, 6 inches. The bridge has a clearance of 12 feet.

Car Wash


Whale Highway

Free Passage Orcas sprint along a channel which has opened in the ice. They are headed deep into McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic, where they hope to find food. They must hurry, however, for wind conditions can cause the channel to freeze again, cutting off the whales' access to air.