Our Beautiful girls, enjoying a little family fun.... yes at a restaurant

The Learning Curve

Well, what we learned was that Kyrah was allergic to, milk,(any type of milk protein), nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, any seafood, wheat and soy. Also every kind of tree that there is. She also has a certain type of antibody in her blood which can cause her to at any time to reject any substance, because her body sees it as the enemy and will fight it, hence the allergic reactions. Not only that her Doc explained to us that these allergies can cause at the least cause her to go into anaphylaxis , and at the worse death. OK it was good to finally get the answers, but now what do we do with it, how do we feed this kid and have her be healthy. Thankfully her allergy to wheat and soy we the most minor, and they were what was causing her eczema, her Doc said as long as we can control the eczema we could have those in her diet. We have since removed wheat and gluten also. The next 8 years have been spent learning how to read and understand labels, understanding cross contamination, learning about our food system, and nutrition. Not to mention trying to make her feel as "normal" as possible. Just a side note..... alot of my family members have developed food allergies later in life, including myself. Mine is to fish and shellfish. My husband Gary and my other daughter Lynzie also have allergies to peanuts and shellfish, Lynzie has the fish allergy also. So long story short, or short story long, thats the background to our food allergy journey. Now that you are up to speed I will start sharing helpful hints, lessons learned, and some very yummy recipes. Hope it can be helpful, and if you have any ideas or recipes of your own, please feel free to share them here. Like I said it's a learning curve, and we are still in it.

The begenning of our food allergy journey

Our journey started with our beautiful daughter Kyrah, (pictured second to left). When she was about six months old, we started her on solid foods, I was still nursing her at this time. She developed severe eczema, covering her entire body. We spent many sleepless nights, and many visits to her Pediatrician. We saw at least 10 different dermatologist, and found no relief for her. At this point no one even mentioned food allergies as a source for her pain.

When she was a year old I stopped nursing her, by this time she was continually covered in eczema, and would scratch till she drew blood. Still no answers from the Dr's. We put her on soy milk, and she seemed to just get worse. At 13 months we had our first of many ER trips with our girl. She had to be admitted due to an asthma attack, still no one suggested the possibility it could be what she was eating. About a month later, I fixed scrambled eggs one morning, and gave her a taste of them. She immediately threw up..... light bulb moment for me. I took her back to her Doc. and we reviewed everything that had been going on with her for the past 7 months.
It was then that the connection was made to food allergies, unfortunately the allergy/immunologist that was recommended, was booked for the next six months.

I went home and that's when my research started, I found a list of the most common allergens. Took all of those out of her diet and waited. Still no improvement, we took her back to the Doc. when she had another asthma attack. This time she made a call to Dr. Irani, the one who was booked for six months, explained to her how desperate the situation was, and thank God she agreed to see us immediately. Kyrah was tested, (not a fun process) but we got answers finally. Dr. Irani also took the time to help educate us about caring for her skin and giving this child some relief. 

This isn't where our journey ended though, it's just the beginning.