Thanks so much for your support & encouragement!!
Katie had a rough morning this morning - vomited 3 times but we finally made a concoction to get her meds in her efficiently and she finally ate & held down her 1st Keto meal today around 11:30 a.m. She has been having some trouble with continous seizures since Friday morning (before we started the diet that night), so I don't think we can really tell that the diet is affecting her seizures negative or positive yet. She had two 5mg rectal doses of diastat yesterday and one 10mg dose today which have slightly improved but not stopped her absence, myoclonic & drop seizures. I did have some encouraging behavior out of her yesterday.
I tried to post a synopsis of her 1st day but my Internet wouldn't let me access the site last nght for some reason. Dutch mom: I think most of your questions will be answered by my day 1 post. I haven't been on MF but thanks for the suggestion. Will do!
Katie's 1st Keto Day
HOW I'M DOING: I'm exhausted but relieved that we've finally started Keto!! Her first meal was the spaghetti with spaghetti squash on Friday night, and today was her first full day of Keto (I'll list the 3:1/1200 cal/day recipes below). The two biggest things I felt the least prepared for were the time it took to measure every last drop of everything to the 10th of a gram and the size of the meals being SO small. It looked like I was making food for a mouse. It took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to make the spaghetti squash last night, but I had whittled that down to 20 minutes by the time meal 4 hit today. I DID feel like I spent all day in the kitchen, but I was trying to do a lot of preparations to make the next meals go quicker (pre-cooking meats, pre-measuring & labeling major meal ingredients). Having many very small Rubbermaid tupperware containers has been great for storing meats, fruits & veggies. I used liquid medicine measuring cups (the plastic ones that come with kiddie meds) for smaller ingredients like oil & butter. This has definitely come in handy. Overall, I think day #1 was pretty busy & at times overwhelming, but not too bad considering the rigors of Keto.
HOW KATIE'S DOING: This past week has been a bad one for Katie as far as seizures, emotions, and cognitive skills go, all of which have been worse than ever for her. Last Sunday, she had tonic clonic seizure #7 and on Friday afternoon she had a diastat for non-convulsive status. I feel it is really way too early to tell if the diet has impacted her seizure activity. She had another non-convulsive status day today and had to get diastat twice. The best that she did all day was to have five to ten minute gaps between her Doose variety absence, myoclonic, & myoclonic astatic (drop) seizures. The good news is that after watching her abilities and personality fade more and more with each passing day, she seemed a lot more like "Katie" today - in spit of all the seizures. After her 1st meal Friday, her mood - which had been in and out of rages all day - became much happier and less negative. Today, I saw some of that old spark come back into her eyes and she stayed in a good mood all day (VERY unusual for her lately). She had been having lots of motor regression, ataxia, and autistic-like oblivion, but tonight when I read her the Cat in the Hat before bed time, she sat still the whole time, neatly turned the pages without crumpling them and reacted/commented on several story elements. To top it off, she went to bed more peacefully than I've seen her in weeks! I hope that this is an encouraging sign.
BUMPS IN THE ROAD: You expect the most bumps at the beginning of Keto. Even though we made sure she ate everything down to the last spatula scrape & she seemed to enjoy the main courses, our biggest hurdle has been getting Katie to eat the cream. We've whipped it, frozen it, added sweetener and Bickford flavors but it is still a BATTLE every meal to get her to finish it - let alone start it. Keep in mind that Katie's been having so much trouble lately, even before Keto she tends to resist eating because she hates to make transtitions from whatever she is doing - even to go to the bathroom to avoid her frequent accidents or to go to the table to eat. Also, her constant seizures today did not help - I often found myself scraping her shirt with a spatula in an attempt to recoup the cream that had spilled from her mouth due to a myoclonic mouth spasm. Arrggh! I'm hoping that improved seizure control in general will help mealtimes go much smoother down the road!
Thanks, again, for the support! I'm determined to do whatever it takes to make this work for Katie!
Kristi
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RECIPES:*Note: I could only find 36% cream & 90% lean ground beef in my stores, but my dietician said to go ahead with these & she will recalculate amounts in next menu group.
1.) Fri Night: "Spaghetti with Meat Sauce"
6g Butter
12g Beef (85% Lean Ground) - Cooked
30g Spaghetti Squash - Cooked (I microved it)
6g Oil, Canola
38g Cream, 40%
3g Cheese, Parmesan Grated (100%)
21g Tomato Sauce (Basil/Garlic/Oregano) Hunts 8 oz
2.) Sat am - "Cheesy Scrambled Eggs with Strawberry"
2g Butter
44g Strawberries - raw
5g Oil, Canola
49g Cream, 40%
8g Cheese, Craft Deli Deluxe American
25g Eggs, Egg Beaters, Original - Con Agra Foods
3.) Sat late morning "Bacon & Kiwi"
15g Bacon, Oscar Mayer - cooked crisp
19g Kiwi Fruit, fresh
5g Oil, Canola
44g Cream, 40%
4.) Sat afternoon "Macaroni & Cheese"
4g Butter
28g Strawberries - raw
28g Spaghetti Squash - cooked
5g Oil, Canola
34g Cream, 40%
21g Cheese, Kraft Deli Deluxe American
5.) Sat night "Chicken & Green Beans"
3g Butter
22g Applesauce, Mott's Natural (No Sugar Added) (I added part of oil, miralax, & vitamins to this along with liquid Sweetener & Bickford's cinnamon - it was still her favorite dish of the meal)
12g Chicken Breast, no skin - cooked
23g Green Beans - cooked
5g Oil, Canola
53g Cream, 40%
Directions: My dietician didn't include directions for most of these - they're pretty self-explanatory, once you get going (cook the meats in butter, use the oil with meats or anywhere else you can hide it, use part of the cream in the recipes - for egg/cheese sauces or with the fruit, or just serve it alone).
Hope these can be of use to someone!
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