All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Mandarin Characters for "Tranquil"

Happy New Year! I feel like I've been "away" for ages. My daughter is now 9 and in a homeschooling Girl Scout troop, since last year, and things have been pretty busy! We were also hit by the viral hurricane that went all around the country, and were down for the count for a week or so. We're all better, now, thankfully.

We're still in treatment with Dr. Li, though I will say that being sick threw us off course for a while, and we're working on getting back into the full swing of things. We're nearing 4 years of treatment and it can be really hard to maintain the full set of protocol items, but we're doing the best we can. The pill-taking is a breeze, but the other protocol components can be hard to keep up when you're not feeling up to par. 

We have an in-person visit with Dr. Li set for late March and I'll be interested in talking about next-steps and having "where do we go from here?"-type discussions. I feel like we're in a place where quite a few food challenges are possible, but it always seems so hard to find the right time for them.

One thing we are working on, is introducing wheat into my daughter's diet. We're doing this slowly, with a special process for preparing the wheat, combined with some treatment elements (from Dr. Li's protocol), in the hopes of making it a smooth process. Wheat can be hard on anyone's stomach, especially for someone who has never had wheat as part of her diet.

I debated introducing wheat, back and forth, for years. The deciding factor ended up being that I felt it was good to have as an option, so we could try baked egg, some day. I know the science isn't definitive, but there are some studies showing that egg baked with wheat binds in the "wheat matrix" in a way that improves tolerability, versus egg baked into gluten-free flour. I know it's not "required" but I think it might be helpful. 

So far, she has had the specially-treated wheat twice, 3 days apart. There haven't been any obvious issues, but we will see how things go, over time, as wheat can sometimes cause delayed gastrointestinal symptoms. Luckily, I am not overly concerned about anaphylactic reactions, but I will certainly keep my senses on alert, as always, when introducing a new item. I feel that things are moving along, albeit slowly, but there isn't much to report at the moment, so it has been pretty "quiet" around here, allergy-wise, which is fine by me!

I hope 2018 treats everyone well, and is a nice "quiet" year for everyone. 

(Unless it's something good, in which case, make a lot of happy noise!)

♥