At age 2, my son, Bryce, had minor health issues that made me wonder if he had food allergies. The first was digestive – often his stomach was bloated, firm and distended and uncomfortable for him, and he has much more gas than the rest of us! We joked about how he could pass gas on command and how noisy he would be in the bathroom, but it did seem indicative of some sort of difficulty.

The second factor was respiratory. Anytime he had even just a slight clear runny nose, he would end up having trouble breathing, landing him in the hospital twice. The doctors described this as “reactive airways” and an “asthmatic reaction.” He had a chronic rattle in his lungs that never quite cleared up.

The third factor was with his ears. He had ear infections and fluid in his ears at just about every doctor visit, sick or well. He took antibiotics a few of the times but other times it wasn’t necessary. The chronic fluid was an indication to me of something; I just didn’t know what.

While I have been very satisfied with his pediatric group, they were not particularly helpful in finding any root cause to any of this. Basically they offered medication for relief and the hope that he would grow out of it.

On my own, I found a pediatric allergist and brought him there “just in case” there was something to be found. On that first visit the doctor had a prick test done and we learned that he had a serious allergy to nuts (particularly peanuts), and some reaction to eggs and milk. The allergist advised keeping nuts and eggs completely out of his diet and reducing the milk. We also did daily breathing treatments with Pulmicort for the next nine months to keep his lungs strong, and I had Xopenex to use at the first sign of labored breathing.

Six months from the initial visit we had blood work done to test the histamine levels for a broader panel of foods and learned that the dairy allergy was much more severe than initially thought. The one positive news was that he tested negative to egg yolk so we worked that back into his diet, but dairy needed to be excluded entirely.

Eliminating dairy, even when it is, for example, in the form of whey and eighth on the list of ingredients, proved challenging. Eating out or with others is also extremely tedious. Thankfully, the dairy allergy is not life-threatening, but the nut allergy is, and we already have one use of the epiPen under our belts (which led to his chickpea allergy discovery), so we hold Bryce in our hands loosely, trusting the Lord with his life, as he is His and we are just doing our best to care for him for as long as the Lord entrusts him to us, which we sure hope is a long, long time!