Game Time

December ran over our household like a freight train.

November ended on a tragic note. Our beloved dog, Tucker suddenly passed on November 30th and our grief clouded the entire holiday season. If you're a dog person, you get how heartbroken we are. He was our bestest buddy and the loss of him has tinged everything joyful we faked our way through last month. It also brought some bumps on the road to food allergy freedom.

N had an episode of vomiting after a treatment one night in early November. She was very full from dinner but it was close to bedtime and she needed to get it done. Keep in mind that her treatment dose is a lot of food. It is 4,000mg of protein in powder form that needs to be mixed with something (pudding at that point in time) and enough of it to make it not taste like powder. So, N got too full and got sick (no, she did not make it to the bathroom).

It happened one more time two days later and it was obviously a Pavlovian reaction. Her fear of throwing up made her throw up.

She began to take longer doing her treatments and her sunny attitude began to dim. Then the night Tucker died broke her. She was sitting at the table, eating her dose. Tucker was in the basement very ill. We went into emergency mode. Our dear friend who is a Vet came over and said it wasn't an injury but that he was bleeding internally. We then began the excruciating task of carrying his lethargic body over the ice to the car. The girls came out and kissed him goodbye.

Not surprisingly, after I drove off into the dark with our bestest buddy for the last time, N threw up during her dose. And no, she didn't make it to the bathroom.

She started throwing up a lot. Most of the times she wouldn't even make it half way through. We all knew it was a psychosomatic response and that her gag reflex was charged up. Her head was no longer in the game. I tried yelling at her once to see if I could shock her out of her trance. Needless to say, that didn't work.

It all came to a head one Monday night in mid-December. It was a very long hour of her barely taking nibbles of her dose. The Hubs and I cheering her through every little taste and distracting her with games and activities. Then she threw up anyway. You guessed it, not in the bathroom.

We told her that this was it, she needed to decide what she was going to do. If she kept vomiting, she wouldnt be able to complete the trial. She wasn't keeping enough of her allergens in her body for it work and we couldn't let her throw up several times a week. We talked about all of the freedom and independence she's gained now that the world is so much safer for her. We reminded her of what it would look like if that freedom went away.

We talked and we cried and we talked and we cried. I walked away a few times because I was so scared and angry. I couldn't let my girl take on the role of victim. There is no room for that in her life.

I was up most of the night. She went to bed around 11PM, sad and feeling beaten.

That night, it snowed. It snowed so much that school was canceled and school never gets canceled here for snow. We woke up to our whole world covered in soft, perfect magic. Suddenly, there was nowhere we needed to be. Right in the middle of a personal crisis and an insane holiday season, the snow came and made everything better. We could take a minute when we really, really needed a minute.

N came downstairs the morning of the snow and said she wasn't going to quit. She said she wanted to do this and folks, that was it. She hasnt even flinched. She does her dose in under 30 minutes every day. She identified smoothies as the best way for her to take it and this helps grind the powder up more so she doesnt deal with the grit. She smiles through the whole thing and her game is completely and totally ON.

BAM!

Once again, this little girl of mine has humbled the hell out of me.

So, here we are at day 182 and just a week left. JUST A WEEK LEFT. Next Wednesday and Friday she'll be open challenged. There will be no double blind placebo fun this time, just an outright test of what her immune system is like 36 weeks after she started.

No matter how next week goes, she's gotten herself at least as far as this place where she is heaps and heaps safer than she was 182 days ago. She doesn't have to worry about crumbs and spills. At best, she'll be ordering crepes on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower this summer. And she wont even ask about the ingredients.