They told us she wouldn’t live past her second birthday. Progressive, they said. Terminal. We were warned it would get worse until there would be no more “worse” left.
Sixteen surgeries before her second birthday. Fourteen emergencies. The kind of life that doesn’t leave space for normalcy. She didn’t crawl. She didn’t laugh. She barely moved. She was slipping away, and we were desperate.
Praying for a Way Out
With nothing left, we prayed. No more doctors. No more complicated words. Just prayer. We begged God for an answer, and He delivered, not with fireworks, but through a diet so simple it felt almost laughable: carnivore.
A Body That Couldn’t Say Yes
Breastfeeding worked, for a time. When solids came, chicken, fruits, and vegetables, her body betrayed her. Gas trapped in her intestines turned into painful pseudo-obstructions. Each bite could mean a trip to the ER.
Soon, she couldn’t eat at all. Her belly swelled like a drum, her limbs shriveled. She lived tethered to IV nutrition, a ghost of the vibrant child she should have been.
She weighed 26 pounds at two and a half. Frail. Gray. Not playing. Not laughing. Surviving, barely.
A New Logic for a Failing Body
Sleepless nights became a search for something, anything. That’s when I stumbled across Dr. Becky Plotner’s work on candida and gas. Hope flickered.
Dr. Plotner introduced me to the GAPS diet. But for my daughter, even the GAPS protocol needed more stripping down. No vegetables. No plants. Just the “No Plant GAPS” diet, a carnivore approach for the medically fragile.
We started simply:
- Pasture-raised chicken broth
- Organ meats, gently cooked
- Raw egg yolks
- Homemade kefir, fermented for 24 hours
- Bone broth, rich and mineral-packed
Two months later, everything changed. She gained 10 pounds. Her cheeks blushed pink again. Her stomach softened. She laughed, really laughed, for the first time.
By six months, she was off IV nutrition. The port in her chest was removed. No hospital stays. No emergencies. Today, she’s six years old. She climbs monkey bars, races her brothers, and rides her bike like she’s chasing the wind.
A Simple Kind of Miracle
Our story isn’t alone. Other terminal children are now thriving after switching to a similar diet. Some are finally gaining weight. Some are free from IV nutrition.
This journey led me to write Dying to Thriving because stories like this deserve to be told. Deserve to give hope.
Healing isn’t always flashy. Sometimes it’s broth. Sometimes it’s fatty meat. Sometimes it’s the kind of faith that refuses to blink in the face of impossible odds.
The odds said my daughter wouldn’t make it. Instead, she lived. And she’s just getting started.