The boy who is allergic to (almost) every food

zero_c · Oct 15, 2007

Twelve-year-old Tylor Savage doesn’t have to ask what’s for dinner. It’s chicken or tuna with carrots and potatoes and maybe some grapes or an apple — the only foods to which he is not allergic.

“I’m a little bored with the same food,” Tylor told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer during a visit to New York on Thursday with his father and sister.

But the British boy is not complaining. When Lauer asked him if he wishes he could eat all the wonderful things he sees other kids wolfing down, he said, “Not really, because I know it will make me ill.”

“Ill” is a mild descriptive for what Tylor went through for most of his life. He was 4 years old the first time he got violently sick after eating. By the time he was 6, the diarrhea and vomiting were getting worse, but his doctors could find nothing wrong with him, putting his digestive problems down to stomach viruses.

“It was horrible,” his 15-year-old sister, Elycia, said.

“It broke my heart,” added his father, David Savage, who made the trip to New York with Tylor and Elycia. Tylor’s mother, Lynne, remained at home in England with the family’s third child.

By the time he was 10, Tylor’s situation was desperate. He was passing out, going into convulsions and passing blood from both ends of his digestive tract. His weight was down to less than 50 pounds, his growth stunted, his body little more than skin and bones.

His mystified doctors took out his appendix, thinking that might be the problem, but he showed no improvement.

Last September, specialists at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where he’d been undergoing tests since April 2006, realized that what Tylor had wasn’t a stomach virus but an extremely rare condition called eosinophilic enteropathy.

The disorder causes his intestines to produce too many white blood cells that act as an immune system and attack food passing through the gut.

Doctors found that he was allergic to nearly everything he ate, including wheat, gluten, dairy products, eggs and soy products.

On the mend
They took him off all food, feeding him a liquid formula through a gastric tube inserted through his nose. They then introduced him to one food at a time, making sure he could tolerate it before adding another. Recently, tuna joined chicken as a protein source.

Although Tylor could eat again, he still needs to be fed vitamins and minerals in liquid form. The tube through his nose was causing painful sores where it rubbed against his nose, so in May it was replaced by a port in his stomach. Every night, Tylor plugs a tube connected to a bag of formula into his stomach.

Since getting the stomach tube and finding solid foods he can eat without getting sick, Tylor is thriving. Last year, he was so sick, he attended just 10 days of school. This year, he’s missed only one day.
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I would hate to be him, because food is one of love. I can't imagine not eating and tasting all the food I had in my life.

oceanocean · Oct 15, 2007

ohhh i saw the report..... poor little boy has to inject his own food into the stomach tube......-shock

kinda gross///// i think i might pass out if i did that to myself

chi_man · Oct 15, 2007

I think I'd rather die if I was that boy....

xmichelly · Oct 15, 2007

-shock how horrible ...
but thank goodness he has at least some food he can eat

The_Jelly · Oct 15, 2007

Thats gotta suck eating the same thing all the time. Then again, we eat rice all the time...lol

Taxloss · Oct 15, 2007

That's no life...or at least it's not what I call a quality life if he hardly can eat any food. Really a poor boy. -ohmy

Knoctur_nal · Oct 15, 2007

now aint that some tough fuckin luck.

nicole · Oct 15, 2007

Oh that's so sad to hear. Well at least he can eat some stuff and not nothing. Glad to hear he's on the mend.

wind2000 · Oct 15, 2007

Hopefully the doctors could come up with a cure since tube feeding in the long run is simply not the solution.

asiangang · Oct 15, 2007

poor kid,has to stick a tube into himself everyday....

xiaojia · Oct 15, 2007

zero_c said: ↑

I would hate to be him, because food is one of love. I can't imagine not eating and tasting all the food I had in my life.
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ya.. something we take for granted.. but at least they finally found the reason.. after 10 freaking years.. doctors..

[N] · Oct 15, 2007

this sucks, like just have to wonder what the taste of food's like that's just sad...

rNb99 · Oct 16, 2007

i feel so sorry for the boy. he is such a brave little boy. i can't imagine how much he suffers.

fookjay07 · Oct 16, 2007

huh? 4real...shit boy

The boy who is allergic to (almost) every food

zero_c Well-Known Member

oceanocean Well-Known Member

chi_man Well-Known Member

xmichelly Well-Known Member

The_Jelly NSFW? :P

Taxloss Stripper Vicar

Knoctur_nal |Force 10 from Navarone|

nicole Well-Known Member

wind2000 Self Schemata

asiangang Well-Known Member

xiaojia Well-Known Member

[N] RATED [ ]

rNb99 Well-Known Member

fookjay07 Well-Known Member