A Nice Reprieve

It really is crazy how time seems to speed up these days. It is hard to believe the end of summer is creeping up! I apologize that this post is a bit long as I missed posting for a week and have a lot to update on.

Two weekends ago I tried peanut in the form of a dark chocolate peanut butter cup (Trader Joe's brand is my favorite) with no issues! I'm very excited about that as it means that although a majority of the Thai food is out due to my shrimp and coconut allergies, I can still (in theory) have Pad Thai, which is my favorite anyways!

I was not, however, successful when I tried crab. I made a crab salad sandwich with fresh arugula and tomatoes from the garden. It was really well balanced, if I do say so myself, with the lemon and arugula cutting through the slight heaviness of the mayo. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly as I had a similar issue with shrimp, about 15-20 minutes later I had what I can only describe as butterflies fluttering in my throat. This was not the same reaction as the shrimp as in that case there was definitely tightening and slight tingling of the mouth but I am going to treat it as if that is the case, just to be safe.

This last weekend I decided to stick to new foods that I was fairly certain were NOT going to be a trigger. I was feeling like I wanted to get a little bit of a rest from the negative-ness I feel each time I have a trigger as I tend to dwell (for a little while at least) on all the thing I'll be "missing out on" now that I can't have that food. I ended up choosing cream, cream cheese, and swordfish to try. All dairy and fish I've introduced so far had been fine so I figured they'd be safe choices. My boyfriend and I made a trip back to my old stomping grounds and got chicken tikka masala (contains cream, and now that I'm thinking about it, I believe the chicken is marinated in yogurt haha) from my favorite Indian restaurant. Just as delightful as I remembered and I had no reactions! Next day we got fresh swordfish from a local fish market and grilled it up with a simple pasta dish with tomatoes from the garden, olives, and a light vinaigrette. No reaction here either! Lastly I made jalapeno poppers with jalapenos (again from the garden, which I am loving!), cream cheese based filling, and bacon. We grilled this on a grill pan as well because why not! Super tasty and again, no reaction! I was super excited after all these wins!

As I mentioned previously, I've been working pretty closely with both my allergist and a dietician during this journey. When I met with my allergist for an update a few weeks ago, he was surprised that none of the foods I identified as triggers were the "typical" ones seen with EoE patients. He also had me get some bloodwork on these trigger foods to see if they were a "true" allergy or not. I got the results back from that and none of them are true allergies for me. This further validates my decision that it was best to try the top 9 allergies instead of the standard top 4 as one of the research articles I read suggested. I know from experience that it's better to cover "all the bases" and (hopefully) only have to do this elimination process once than get through 4 no problem and having to start all over again with other categories. I felt going into this that the "failure" from that might dissuade me from continuing on and in my case, it's a very good thing I did so. I was also talking with my dietician last week and she was so confused how almonds were okay but coconut and cashews were not so I decided to revisit those. I had two rather large handfuls of dark chocolate covered almonds to test again and sure enough I ended up getting tingling in the mouth shortly after. I have determined it was more than likely the quantity of almonds I had in the spoonful of almond butter compared to the large amount of chocolate almonds that was the difference (or I guess it could be however it was processed in the nut butter form). In either case, I'm going to be happy that if there is trace amounts (cross contamination) I'm okay but I won't choose to have them going forward.

I decided this morning I need to refocus my thoughts. More than likely all tree nuts and crustaceans are going to be off the table for me, however, I need to remember all the things I CAN have that I have successfully introduced instead of focusing on the TWO (out of nine) categories I've had issues with! I went back to my box of stuff I hadn't cleared yet and was super excited to take out a majority of the items left in there. The only things left are an assortment of nuts / nut butters as well as some nut related liquors (amaretto / frangelico).

Game plan for this weekend is to try lobster roll and armaretto. Though almond is a trigger, not only is amaretto, depending on the manufacturer, not always made from almonds. Also, as I found with the chitosan, the protein seems to be the problem so if the protein is not present I may tolerate it in this form. With the lobster, there is a good chance it is a trigger as both shrimp and crab are, however, I would rather know for sure. I do, plan to split the roll with my boyfriend just in case.

Until next time!