We completed visit 3 in Luca’s treatment plan just a couple weeks ago and it all went very well!

He had 3 days of appointments again and on the first day he challenged duck egg yolk, mustard, and brazil nut. He ate a large amount of each food, followed by 5 minutes of exercise. He passed each one! On day 2 he challenged mare’s milk and introduced sesame, and on day 3 he introduced pea and hen egg yolk (!!!). He did great with everything and we had no problems or reactions. 

All the foods he challenged now get moved to his daily maintenance, which is what he consumes in the morning. The introduced foods, sesame, pea, and hen egg yolk, are his treatment foods which are consumed later in the day. 

The list of maintenance foods is getting long, and Luca now has ELEVEN things he must eat every single morning. He’s been doing so well with it though. We are very lucky he is so cooperative and overall not a real picky kid. 

Hen egg yolk is a confirmed allergen for Luca (he had a reaction to a baked egg oral food challenge as a baby) and it blows my mind that he is now eating small amounts of it everyday. Egg whites will be treated later, but by the end of this cycle, he should be up to 7 mL of cooked egg yolk!

We of course made time for some fun stuff while out in California. We are so close to LA, but really haven’t spent any time in the city and this trip we did a ton of sight seeing there. The traffic was absolutely horrendous, but we enjoyed seeing some new things.

We made a trip to see the Hollywood sign (I mean, how can you not?), drove up to the Griffith Observatory, which had stunning views of the city, and then followed up our sightseeing with our favorite vegan and nut-free treat, Happy Ice! On our long commute out of the city we took a drive down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and marveled at all the fancy cars and expensive shopping. We also visited the Los Angeles Zoo, The California Science Center, The La Brea Tar Pits, and The Last Bookstore, a multilevel new and used bookstore in downtown LA. There’s still so much to see, but we’ll have plenty of time on future visits. 

We also did some of our favorites, like The Aquarium of The Pacific and dinner at Noble Bird. We finally made a visit to Seal Beach, and loved it. The area gave us some serious Northern Michigan beach town vibes and the beach had the biggest seashells! There was a pier to walk and a playground and we spent 2 mornings getting coffee from a couple cute little local places and walking along the beach collecting shells. The weather was gorgeous—60s and sunny. Mornings were cool, but coming from an Ohio January, the sun felt so good.

This process is definitely a slow one, but we are feeling really positive about how Luca is doing. While we are so grateful to have the opportunity to do this for Luca, we have really been feeling the stress of everything we are managing lately. I have recently read of several devastating deaths, four in just the last month, in the food allergy community. It’s a constant, sobering reminder of the reality of having a child with food allergies. We simply cannot afford to let our guard down, or risk making a mistake, and with the financial costs and the time commitment of this program, and the increasing difficulty of finding and sourcing Luca’s safe food, it’s left us feeling defeated and depleted. This past visit felt like a big step forward though, and a giant victory for all of us! Every day that passes brings us just that much closer to a safer (and easier) life.