Monday, November 9, 2015

Mmmmm . . . Bacon! {Years Ago}

I promised last week that I'd be sharing "Years Ago" stories. The story that comes to mind this week isn't quite a "years ago" story, but I can guarantee that it'll be told for years to come.



Shortly after we moved to Colorado, Lauren's transplant medicines and her new anti-fungal medicine for Valley Fever quit playing nicely with each other and started beating up on her kidneys. She ended up spending a week in the hospital waiting for her kidney function to improve and making a switch to a totally new set of transplant medicines.

When she first went to the Emergency Room, she wasn't tolerating any food or formula at all. As her kidneys improved, she slowly regained part of her appetite. Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of allergy safe meal or snack options in the hospital. We found out that the bacon and jello are safe for her combination of allergies, and she proceeded to order it at every meal.

Every single meal.

Sometimes she'd have a bit of cereal, some chicken fajitas, or a few bites of rice with her bacon and jello, but she always had the bacon and jello.

One evening, a friend of ours came to visit, bringing her daughter and another friend to cheer Lauren up. Lauren's dinner tray came up with six pieces of bacon on it. I'm not exactly why they sent that much, but she thought it was great and her friends were incredibly jealous that she got to eat that much bacon at one meal.


As her hospital stay continued, her transplant team asked me to keep a food diary so they could see her nutritional intake. I was a bit embarrassed to fill it out. Thankfully, all of her doctors just laughed when they saw how much bacon she had eaten in a day. (Yes, that's a total of 10 pieces of bacon, 4 containers of jello, and few bites of her other food.)



Perhaps what makes the hospital bacon story so likely to be remembered is that this wasn't the first time we've taken notice of Lauren's bacon obsession. A little over a year ago, I took the three kids to a pancake fundraiser breakfast for the college ministry at the University of Arizona. Lauren went through the line and got bacon. Then, she went through the line again. She went through several more times while I was busy talking, and I've heard estimates that she had eaten close to a pound of bacon by herself. Thankfully, one of the other adults put a stop to her bacon binge by handing her a huge tray of bacon so offer it to people who were still eating their pancakes. With both hands on the tray, she couldn't shovel any more pieces in her own mouth.

The college ministry got a hefty donation from me that morning.


B is for Bacon and is the second in my "Years Ago" stories that I'm telling as I blog my way through the alphabet. I'd love to have you join in the fun -- either by blogging this week about something starting with the letter B or just by visiting all of my friends who link up. (Click the graphic below to go to this week's linky page.)


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9 comments:

  1. Too cute and a memory! Sometimes whatever it takes to get a child eating :)

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  2. I think Celia, Damien, and Lauren could weasel their way into a new Guiness record category with bacon.

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  3. This is so funny! Kids crack me up at the things they get "obsessed" with!

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  4. There's just something about bacon!

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  5. That is a great story! And I am glad she can tolerate something she loves!

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  6. Kelly is a bacon fiend as well! Hmm...maybe it's a common thing for kids who started off not being able to eat much! LOL

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    1. I wonder if it's the perfect combination of easy to eat, but satisfyingly crunchy. As well as, just tasting awesome.

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  7. That's a great story! My 12 year old, Mikayla, had her gallbladder when she was five years old. We had a three day hospital stay and when the nurse asked her what she wanted to eat right after surgery she exclaimed, eggs and BACON! The nurses got a kick out of it. She still has a bacon obsession, one day before a big gymnastics meet she ate a ton of bacon, like 7 or 8 pieces, and proceeded to make herself ill during the meet. Needless to say, her coach and I have banned eating bacon on meet mornings :-)

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    1. I'm laughing about the bacon ban. Does she eat bacon afterwards instead?

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