A boy’s serious ailment required only a simple fix once it was diagnosed

When she heard her younger son’s quavery cry of “M-o-o-o-m-m-m” drifting down the hall in the middle of the night, Jocelyn Mathiasen stiffened, braced for what lay ahead.

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Sometimes the little boy would awaken just before dawn shaky and weak, complaining of hunger or thirst; after consuming something he would quickly recover. But on the bad nights Peter Dawson would spend hours lying on the floor of the bathroom clutching his stomach, vomiting intermittently and refusing to drink anything. It took him hours to rebound — and it was never clear what had made him so sick.

Mathiasen did not know what to make of these episodes, which at first were only mild and infrequent, blips in the life of her otherwise healthy child. But when Peter turned 5 in 2006 and the family moved to Easton, Conn., from Seattle, Mathiasen asked her new pediatrician whether the episodes were normal. Leveling a hard look at her, he told her that what she was describing was definitely not normal — and might signify a serious problem, such as juvenile, or Type 1, diabetes. But after tests for diabetes were negative, the search for the underlying cause of Peter’s odd problem floundered.

It would take nearly five years for a specialist eight states away to figure out what was wrong. The solution was a surprisingly cheap and prosaic remedy — but one that recently drew attention in an airport security line.

As an infant, Peter would periodically wake up in the morning in obvious distress, grabbing his bottle and sucking down the contents “in one gulp, like he was desperate,” his mother recalled.

“I didn’t worry too much about it because it didn’t happen often, and after he ate he seemed fine,” Mathiasen said. For some reason the episodes were worse when the family traveled. Mathiasen said she refrained from mentioning them to his doctor, not wanting to seem alarmist. “I was trying to be this relaxed mother,” she said.

After the test for diabetes was negative, the pediatrician referred Peter to a pediatric endocrinologist in New Haven. Once a tumor and several other disorders had been ruled out, the doctor settled on a diagnosis of reactive hypoglycemia: severely low blood sugar that occurs several hours after eating. She predicted that Peter would outgrow the problem when he hit puberty and recommended that he eat yogurt at bedtime: The protein would be slowly digested and would prevent his blood sugar from plummeting.

By 2007 Mathiasen had become increasingly uneasy. Despite the yogurt, Peter kept having episodes. She began keeping lollipops or Skittles in the house: A rapid hit of sugar seemed to help him recover faster.

After four incidents in four weeks, Mathiasen consulted a second pediatric endocrinologist. He admitted the first-grader to a hospital overnight, hoping to catch an episode, which could provide important clues. Peter underwent hourly checks; although his blood sugar dropped, the readings were not alarming.

When he was discharged the following morning, Mathiasen was told to continue the yogurt regimen; by now he was eating two heaping bowls at bedtime.