Welcome to our blog!
If you haven’t figure it out yet, we are passionate about food allergies…because we have to be. Our first son (J-1), has multiple food allergies, and because of this, as a parent you are forced to both understand and help cure their food allergies. Here is a little of our back story to get to know us and our journey…
We had a healthy 3-month old baby boy that developed severe Eczema (Atopic Dermatitis), especially on his face. Looked something like this:
Dr. G (our pediatrician) prescribed some pretty heavy (steroids- Triamcinolone and the oil textured 2.5% hydrocortisone) creams and told us to use them frequently until the eczema went away. We asked him what causes eczema, and he basically tells us that it is genetic and that we should just use the creams and J-1 will get over it. My wife specifically asks about food and her breast milk (at this time he was only having breastmilk), but the doctor says that food doesn’t cause Eczema, especially not through breastmilk. We go home with creams and high hopes for getting over this.
At home, my wife googles some stuff (I know, you are all thinking that we are the idiots that use Dr. Google for everything, well sometimes it’s needed). She sees that Eczema can be linked to something called the Atopic March (Atopic Dermatitis-Food Allergy-Environemtnal Allergy-Asthma) and my wife has eczema which she thinks is exacerbated by eating gluten (she has Hashimotos which she believes has something to do with all of this). She immediately does some searches for food allergist/immunologist(s) in our area and she finds none(we liven a rural area). We then find high recommendations for an allergist that is 2 hours away by her parents house (thinking that we can go when we visit). We schedule an appointment and wait. The appointment is a couple weeks later and during those couple weeks, the creams help and get rid of the Eczema, but the minute we would stop…it always came back. Worse and worse.
So, we go to see Dr. P (if you read the blog you will get to know Dr. P even better. He’s pretty good). He states that about 40-60% of eczema is food related and can be prevented by cutting out the food. We proceed to tell Dr. P about our experience so far and he decides to administer the skin-prick test. Looked something like this, but 40 dots:
We did the entire panel (40 pricks) and found out that he was allergic to 3 things that day:
EGG
ALMOND
SESAME
So, we are thankful and sitting in the doctors office plotting how to cut out these foods from my wife’s diet, when the doctor comes back in and hands us an…EPIPEN.
At that point it GOT REAL for us and we realized the gravity of what he was telling us. At the time, we didn’t have some cosmic revelation about how our lives would be changed forever, but we realized that this was the beginning of a journey that would require us to be really involved parents in a way that is distinct. Parents are always concerned about their children, but food allergy parents have a tough time because they are asked to start to see food (usually a family and friend experience that is fun and inviting) as a stressful time, especially around other young children and extended family. This blog tells the rest of our story, but fast forward to today and…
Where are we today?
Well, we have 2 boys now; J-1 and J-2, and J-1 has multiple allergies at the age of 2. The total list includes:
Dairy
Eggs
(He can have Baked Egg because he passed the challenge)
Wheat
Tree Nuts
(He can have Pistachios only- again, he passed the challenge)
Peanuts
Soy
(seems to be over this)
Sesame
Our second son, J-2 is only 5 months old…but so far he has 1 Allergy:
EGG
We (my wife and I) write this blog often times to feels a sense of camaraderie as we do not have any immediate friends whose child has a dangerous and confirmed group of food allergies. We understand that it is on the rise, but sometimes it is nice to have little community to discuss our successes and failures. We write to hear from others their stories and hopefully not feel alone in this struggle. Feel free to join us on this journey and thanks for stopping by.