Tolerance Visit 1 - Take 2!

We have almost completed our latest dosing cycle through The Food Allergy Institute and I am grateful to say, it has been uneventful! Luca did a great job over the summer and we head back very soon to complete what will hopefully be his last appointment before “graduation.” 

Reading that back feels so surreal.

This past April we flew to California to challenge 19 peanuts again. We had to repeat his visit from the year before due to two unexpected reactions. Up until this appointment, Luca has had to consume a certain number of peanuts every single day to gain tolerance. After completing this last appointment, we went home with a plan of eating 18 peanuts, 6 days a week with a day off each week for “exploration,” meaning Luca could try any peanut containing food (up to 18 peanuts) or simply skip his normal dosing for that day. This trains the immune system to not need the food to be consumed every day to continue to tolerate it.

Luca tried a couple different things that had peanuts in it, and honestly didn’t care for them. That’s okay, I don’t need him to love peanut butter. I just need it to not send him to the hospital. So most weeks we simply skipped dosing that one day each week. I cannot possibly articulate how nice it has been to have a “day off” every week. I cannot wait for graduation because as time goes on Luca will not need to consume the food every day to maintain tolerance like he does now. It will become less and less frequent as time goes on. If you were to look up a picture of burnout in the dictionary, our faces would be next to it. We are soooo tired of the daily food allergy treatment grind!!

BUT, as tired as we are of it, we can’t help but be grateful. It has opened up a world for us that I never thought would be possible. We can eat out almost everywhere and we no longer get so stressed out about the prospect of other people cooking for our child. We rode our bikes to get ice cream all the time this summer - something that, at the start of this year, seemed like a BIG DEAL. And now it’s just our normal. We are also so much more relaxed vacationing as a family now. This last trip we ate most of our meals at restaurants, had breakfast at our hotel every morning, and Luca even had an airplane-issued snack and drink on the flight home! I realize these things are “normal" for most families, but for us, it’s something we’ll never take for granted.

We wanted to make this last trip a fun one, since it had been so long since our last trip out to California, and because our family had a really hard time last year dealing with all the allergic reaction drama. So we brought Gia and Rocco along and did Disney! We haven’t been there since Luca started this program 4 years ago. At the time he was only three years old and Gia had just turned one! It was every bit as magical as we’d hoped it would be and we were so sad to leave. 

And here is a little throwback of our Disney 2022 trip vs. our Disney 2026 trip. Looking at these pictures really puts into perspective how long we’ve been doing this. Our family has grown so much while in this program and this trip felt really special because we truly got to experience firsthand how all of our lives have changed for the better. While we are ready to be done with food allergy treatment, I will be forever grateful for the opportunities we’ve had these last four years. For now, we continue to keep our eyes on the prize and hope and pray for an uneventful next few months!