Visit 6

Visit 6 was a really monumental visit for Luca and the whole family came along to cheer him on!

On his first appointment day Luca was scheduled for bloodwork. Ideally we want to see Luca’s “allergic numbers'' go down throughout the program as he treats and tolerates his allergies.

We just got notified that his bloodwork is back, and while they will go over everything at our next visit, they did give us some good news! As a result of the bloodwork, most of Luca’s morning maintenance foods dropped in frequency. So instead of having 16+ foods to eat every single morning, he only has to eat that many once a week. Every other day is only 4-5 different foods. He has done SO well with eating all he has to eat every morning but he’s really getting burned out on a lot of it and has been giving us some push back lately. I can’t say I blame him. Needless to say, we’re hoping this makes mornings a little easier for all of us!

While in California Luca challenged duck egg white, walnut, denatured cow’s milk, and soy. He passed all challenges and we are so proud and excited for him! Soy is in EVERYTHING and out of all Luca’s allergies, one of the hardest to avoid. Now that he passed his challenge he can freely eat it! We have been trying all sorts of new things the last few weeks. Some of Luca’s new favorite treats are Pop Tarts, Froot Loops, and Oreos! Getting a smidge more freedom is such a huge deal for us and it’s been so fun to watch Luca try new things.

In addition to his food challenges, Luca introduced 4 new foods that we will dose through for this current cycle. The foods he introduced were pistachio, cow yogurt, hen egg white, and PEANUT. Hen egg white is the last step to treating his egg allergy and if he passes that challenge at our next visit, it’s one more food that is safe for Luca. We can’t wait!

There has been so many different animal eggs, mammal milks, nuts, and seeds we have to source, buy, and prepare to treat Luca’s allergies. For his cow yogurt introduction though, we got to buy a “normal” Yoplait yogurt! It’s so nice to just add a container of yogurt onto my regular grocery order each week versus ordering something or making a separate trip to a specialty food store.

Pistachio and peanut are anaphylactic allergies for Luca so we were a tad nervous about introducing those but he did not have any problems in the office or so far at home. Both of these foods will be gummies for a while. His introduction dose of peanut was 1 mg, which is equivalent to 1/400th of a peanut. This week he is up to 8 mg. It’s a slooooow process, but that’s part of why it’s considered safer than traditional OIT. We knew this moment was coming, but even still, it’s a very surreal feeling for me to purposely give him the very food that had us rushing him to the ER as a baby. 

We got even more good news this time too. Moving forward, Luca will drop down to 2 days of appointments for the next 2 visits, and then it will be just a single clinic appointment for the rest of our visits. We were really excited to hear this because he has had 3 days of appointments every visit and we are really looking forward to shorter and quicker trips. Quite frankly, we are really burned out from the constant food prepping and frequent traveling. It’s going to be really nice to be able to fly in and out for a quick trip. Shorter trips mean less stuff to pack, less money to spend, and getting home to our other kiddos faster. 

We had a really fun, chill week with all the kids (as chill as it gets flying across the country with 3 kids 4 and under). The weather was beautiful and we went to the beach every day. We did our usual trips to Noble Bird, In N’ Out, and the Long Beach Aquarium. We stayed at a new AirBnb this time and the kids loved the putting green that was in the backyard!

On our last night we got drinks at Ballast Point and had one final dinner at Noble Bird to celebrate a successful trip! It’s always such a relief when we walk out of that last appointment, knowing Luca tolerated all the food with no reactions and we made it through without anything derailing our trip or any of the appointments. I’m really glad we decided to bring all 3 kids with us. It’s a lot, but I’m always so grateful for the memories we make as a family and I was especially happy we were all there to support Luca at such a big visit!

I’m really impressed with how well all 3 kids did traveling. The flights are about 4.5 hours and those travel days are so long. We left the day after the time change too, and with a 3 hour time difference in California, the kid’s sleep was all over the place. They all handled it so well though. We were TIRED when we got home… but tired in the best possible way.

Luca took so many big steps forward this past visit and we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Truthfully, with everything else we have on our plates, this program has felt really hard lately. We really needed these “wins.” It’s been the motivation I think we all have needed to keep moving forward.

I’m trying to get used to the thought of Luca being able to eat whatever he wants someday and I can hardly wrap my mind around it. One good thing about our journey with food allergies is that we don’t take any of the little things for granted. I hope long after we are done with the program and Luca reaches food freedom, all the little things feel just as special to us as they do now.