Travelling with a Food Allergy Kid

Many of you that read this are familiar with Nitara's story. Some of you aren't so I'll share the details. Nitara has a special kind of food allergy called eosinophilic esophagitis. It took us longer to diagnose it than to learn to say the name. It's also called EE. Basically Nitara is allergic to the proteins in most foods. If she eats them, white blood cells will infiltrate her esophagus thinking they are pathogens and the result is a swollen esophagus, pain, difficulty swallowing, nausea, vomiting, and so on (a long list of "so on's"). She was put on a feeding tube at 3 months old but was not diagnosed with this until almost 3 years old. Strangly enough, even though there is no cure for EE, we are relieved to finally know what is going on and how to treat it. The way Nitara is being treated is to depend on most of her nutrition from a special formla where the proteins are broken into amino acids so the body won't react to them. We are slowly introducing food back into Nitara's diet but it's a very long process. At the moment it is easier to list the foods she can eat rather than the ones she can't. She can have potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and trying apples. Also three kinds of oil (safflower, sunflower, canola), salt and cane sugar. She only eats small amounts of these foods but it's important to keep up her eating skills.

Through many emails and phone calls my mother in law finally located some sunflower oil so we can cook Nitara's potatoes! Carrots, broccoli, and apples can all be found there. But what they don't have is Nitara's favorite snack, Lays chips. Lays has a version that is made with sunflower oil. You can't find these in India. If I brought large bags of Lays they would go bad in the humidity within a couple of days. So I searched high and low for snack sized ones and finally found them in a package of 20 chips. I bought three of these bags to get enough Lays plain chips to last the trip. And filled one small suitcase only with Lays. I think the rest of our family is going to be eating flavored chips for weeks to come when we get back!

Also coming with us are a small jug of free and clear laundry detergent, 30 bags for her feeding pump, the pump and recharger and all that, feeding syringes, med syringes, a whole lot of medicines (she has asthma, environmental allergies, and GERD, too), and 18 cans of Neocate Jr. formula, 16 of which will be hand-carried to ensure that they are not stolen out of the luggage. It's very hard to find her special formula in India. Nitara is not going to eat any of the meals on the airplane (which is fine because Vignesh will probably want them), and it's going to be a challenge to tell extended family not to offer her food. More importantly not to feel sorry for her in front of her, to shake their heads and click their tongues in sympathy. Nitara has a wonderful attitude about it all and I don't want her to consider that she should feel sorry for herself since others are making such a big deal about it. At home we have a safe haven for her but it's going to be different outside of our own home.

But that's life. Given all her medical issues Nitara is doing remarkably well, talks up a storm, is happy most of the time, lots of energy, and very big for her age. And so we will embark on our journey with all of this extra stuff. I would love to see the look of the baggage inspector when he or she finds a whole suitcase full of Lays!

Abi has started her own blog here: http://abisindiablog.blogspot.com/
If you have kids she would be thrilled to get input from them and will try to answer their questions.

Okay, off to bed. Next post should probably be from India!