The Ketogenic Diet

I first came across the Ketogenic Diet while reading a textbook on epilepsy. I quickly found the website Mathews friends and began to read stories of hope in controlling seizures. Ava's pattern of seizures were continuing and from reading other parents stories of seizure control (or lack thereof) I knew I did not want to wait for Ava to be on four different drugs with limited control before beginning the diet.
I went to her pediatrician and asked him about the diet.
"Yuck", he said wrinkling his nose in distaste. "You have to feed your child things like butter and mayo."
End of subject for him. No facts on how the diet could be successful for many or how Ava is an excellent candidate for the diet because she only has myoclonic seizures. Nope, just yuck.
It is a good thing I am both stubborn and don't listen very well or perhaps I would have been deterred.
A few days later I contacted her neurologist. She suggested we wait a bit longer before thinking about it. She said that it wasn't something we enter into lightly as we need to spend a week in the hospital to initiate the diet.
I bugged her again two weeks later. I wasn't going away. I think she realized that we would be committed to the diet and said we would come in probably around three months later.
I read up as much as I could about the diet and would dream about the really amazing success stories where children were going in to the hospital in wheelchairs and leaving skipping down the hallways.
After about a week of this I had to check myself of these dreams. We were doomed to fail the diet if our expectations were so high. I changed (with effort) my expectations to have seizure control and put the hope for a miracle through the diet on the back burner.
We got a nice surprise when the hospital called to say they had an earlier opening and could we come in two weeks! Within 20 minutes I had childcare arranged me and my husbands work vacations booked and the dog taken care of.
Everybody knew how important this was for Ava.
Before long we were taking the 2.5 hour drive to the hospital to initiate the diet and despite my best efforts the hope for a miracle resurfaced to create a dance of anticipation in my tummy.