My daughter was sick — and getting sicker. Then I looked at her diet and discovered the healing power of food

As told to Shoshana Gross

Esty was my kvetchy kid. I took it as truth that every mother had one of those children. I brushed off her lethargy and her tendency to follow me around whining, “Mooommy!” as yet another phase in the “terrible twos.” When I sat, Esty’s head instantly nestled in my lap. When I walked, Esty clung to my skirt like a limpet. When she came home from playgroup, she would already be sprawled on the floor, asleep, before I could put together an after-school snack.

“What’s wrong with her?” asked my friends and sister and mother and mother-in-law.

“She’s two,” I answered, unconcerned.

And then her morah asked me.

“Esty’s probably tired from running around!” I said with a laugh.

“She doesn’t play at school. She sits all day. Why is she always so tired?”

I had no answer, and the first stirrings of unease took hold.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked the pediatrician at her four-year-old well visit, after explaining Esty’s symptoms and behaviors.

“The only thing I’m concerned about is that your daughter hasn’t gained an ounce since her third birthday,” he replied. We looked at Esty, who slumped on the doctor’s examining table, pale and languid.

I explained that she was a picky eater who complained of stomach pain after every two bites of food.

“Maybe she’s a slow grower,” the pediatrician said, and we left it at that.

A few months later, I was helping Esty get dressed when I noticed a strange rash, oozing pus, behind her ear. This was soon joined by an odd red patch on the side of her nose. We hustled to the doctor.

“It’s two separate skin infections. Coincidence,” the doctor told us confidently, typing out a prescription for antibiotics. The rashes went away… and then reappeared as soon as the medication was done.

This was a medical puzzle, and our pediatrician relished the challenge.

“It must be something internal. Let’s do some bloodwork, and maybe we can find a connection between these totally unrelated skin conditions,” he concluded.

And that was how I was introduced to a whole new vocabulary of medical jargon.

The bloodwork indicated that Esty’s ESR was elevated. So was her CRP. ESR and CRP were terms for the measurements of inflammation levels in a person’s blood. I didn’t know it then, but I was going to become an expert in this new language of chronic illness. The normal range was ten to 15. Esty’s was 90. But her iron levels were also low, so the doctor focused on that. She was only four, and he saw no reason to look any further.

“All Esty needs is an iron infusion, and she’ll be a different girl,” the doctor reassured me. Innocent in the ways of hospitals, I came on time to the appointment, at an unearthly hour, with both my newborn and a decidedly uncooperative toddler. When we were finally ushered into the room to endure the hour-long procedure, as I held a screaming child in each arm, I davened for the magical transformation.

It never happened. We tried a second infusion. No change.

Esty’s skin rash faded, the doctor assured me that all would be well, and I resigned myself to parenting a lethargic, kvetchy child until she grew out of it.