A Light at the End of the Tunnel

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend!

Our banana trial is in full swing and going extraordinarily well! Not only is he showing no negative reaction signs whatsoever, but so far there isn’t a possible way to present bananas to Zac that he doesn’t like.

He’ll wolf down whole bananas in minutes. Frozen whole bananas? Awesome. Dehydrated banana chips? Screams for them. Banana ice cream? “Wow, Mommy! You really DO love me!”

It’s going so well, we’re beginning the three day break a day early. Thursday we’ll reintroduce, and if that goes well Zac will have his FIFTH FOOD!

I’m a little surprised things are going so well, actually, considering that last week during the trial we had LOTS of accidental ingestions. 

Thursday Jed left a pork rind on the floor that I didn’t notice. Zac picked it up, of course, and I wound up yanking it out of his mouth. I know he took a bite of it, but I’m not positive that he ate any of it. Pork is a safe food, of course, but I don’t know what kind of salt was used on this bag of pork rinds, and I don’t know what these pigs were fed, so I still wouldn’t feed them to Zac at this point in time.

The very next day, Jed left some smoked salmon on his plate at the table and before I could clean it up Zac decided to help himself. I didn’t see him eat any, but he looked as if he were swallowing something when I found him.

I asked him if he’d eaten any of Jed’s salmon and he said “Uh huh!” I’m still not 100% sure he actually ate it, but two things make it likely he did: one is that he’s very good about answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions, and the second thing is that he had hiccups about an hour later.

He hasn’t had hiccups in a while, certainly not during the banana trial; usually it’s a sign of something not sitting well in his body.

Then Saturday he ate a potato chip. Once again, Jed left his bag of potato chips ON THE FLOOR (he knows better) and Zac helped himself. This time we KNOW he ate some; there was a bite taken out of the chip, and the remaining chip Darrel dug out of his mouth was moist from being sucked on.

Other than the hiccups after salmon he has had NO signs of a reaction to any of these foods! 

It’s actually enough to make Darrel and I wonder if he isn’t – perhaps – beginning to outgrow FPIES. 

I hate the idea of getting excited too soon, and I am absolutely not  saying he has outgrown FPIES. Just that he might, maybe, possibly, hopefully, be in the beginning stages of outgrowing it.

Darrel and I are speculating that with corn being his most sensitive trigger, by keeping him so completely corn-free we may be allowing his body time to heal and strengthen. So maybe, just maybe, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel?

Darrel is all for going full steam ahead on food trials, dropping our cautious “ten days on, three days off, seven days off” routine down to a “three days on, three days off, two days on” trial schedule.

I’ll admit I want to do it, too. But there’s a part of me that hesitates. I hate the idea of having to backtrack. If we move too fast, we might miss some chronic sign of a problem. After all, it took us several months to see that pork is FPIES safe but causes histamine problems in him!

So I don’t know where we’ll go next or how fast we’ll go.

It feels sort of like I imagine a prisoner might feel when told he’s up for parole. There’s a glimmer of hope, but you don’t want to get too excited, too soon, because there’s always the chance that those hopes will be dashed. 

For his part, Jed has been…off, lately.

He barely ate most of this weekend, and when he did eat, it was almost only bananas and potato chips. I served him delicious, healthy meals, and he refused almost every time to eat more than a few bites. But he would beg for potato chips and bananas.

I. Don’t. Get it.

He pooped on the potty Sunday afternoon, and if I didn’t know better I’d say it was a full-on fructose poop: light-colored, loose, sticky, nasty. Looking over his food journal, though, I see nothing that could cause this.

Bananas could, theoretically, be a fructose problem, but he’s been eating bananas his entire life and has never previously shown any signs of not tolerating them. They’re one of the first “maybe” fructose foods we ascertained was perfectly fine for him. So I’m at a loss.

Could the world be so cruel as to make Jed intolerant of bananas JUST as we’re discovering they are (almost certainly) SAFE for Zac?

I asked him if his tummy hurt, and he said that no, it didn’t. But why else would a child want to eat such bland foods unless his tummy felt ‘off’ somehow?

He’s also been very argumentative and belligerent the last few days.

I’m at my wits end about Jed. I don’t know what to make of any of this. Is it normal for his age behavior? Is it a food intolerance? Did he get too much sun this weekend and just feels icky in general? If it is a food problem, which food is the problem?

I don’t know. I’m getting tired of playing food detective.

The only thing I know for certain right now is that we’re about to get really strict with Jed about food. The “Rules” have been in place for months now, and this week he broke them every chance he got. Since he’s been SO GOOD about stray food around Zac so far, Darrel and I weren’t paying close enough attention and Zac seized his opportunity.

Thank goodness there have been no adverse affects from this, but I don’t want to chance it in the future.

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In broader news than my family, this week is Food Allergy Awareness Week. I’m not actively kicking off much today, since I wanted to give a banana trial update, but stay tuned for Awareness raising posts this week!

What’s your best way to raise awareness of food allergies?