Look who’s sitting in her car again!

Me!

This time, I’m in front of one of the local Boys and Girls club, it’s after dinner time, it’s cold and I didn’t bring my book.

Emily is in there with the lady from Community Living and her intern.

If it goes well tonight, this could be another recurring volunteer gig for my girl so I’m sitting here for what could be 3 hours…

Here’s to hoping she can have support worker hours approved to help with this as I can’t imagine I would enjoy volunteering here to help her.

How I wish I could be a fly on the wall to see how the kids are reacting to her, if they are nice to her, if she fits in.

I hate not being with her and provide her a buffer just in case but I know I have to give her room to learn and grow…

This is a crazy roller coaster ride my friends and here I thought it would get easier once she would be an adult.

Emily’s food sensitivities 

My girl doesn’t like me talking about her digestive system…

All I can tell you is that Emily has had a tummy ache probably from the moment she had her first drink as a newborn. 

Over the years we’ve changed her milk, changed her diet, added bran and prunes, removed dairy, added it back when it didn’t help, removed bananas and added them back…  we tried many things but never figured out how to help her tummy. 

As a mom, even though my girl is 18, I still want to help her so this past summer, I took her to a naturopath and decided to have blood work done to look for food sensitivities. 

I know it’s a controversial subject. Many don’t believe in the results from the test but I felt like this could give us a new path to explore. 

As my lovely husband pointed out that the veracity of that particular blood analysis isn’t proven, I reminded him that Emily’s diagnosis comes with a proven list of “will never”.  

Never walk, never talk, never understand or even recognize us…

It’s proven!  But we all know that it’s not true!  Emily does all those things and more so with that in mind, we went to get her results this past September. 

My fabulously amazing daughter flagged for 35 food sensitivities. 

35

That’s a big number!

Our naturopath wasn’t sure how we would react to all of this but we had decided to take clear steps towards eliminating the food that Emily can’t process properly in order to help her. 

Jonathan and I were ready to follow the same rule as Emily. 

In no specific order:

  1. Cow milk 
  2. Goat milk
  3. Sheep milk
  4. Egg yolk
  5. Egg white
  6. Casein
  7. Mushroom
  8. Potato
  9. Rice
  10. Corn
  11. Pea
  12. Bean (red kidney)
  13. Bean (white haricot)
  14. Soy bean
  15. Lentil
  16. Cabbage (savoy/white)
  17. Baker’s yeast
  18. Brewer’s yeast
  19. Blackberry 
  20. Raspberry
  21. Hazelnut
  22. Cashew
  23. Almond
  24. Peanut
  25. Brazil nut
  26. Pistachio
  27. Sunflower seeds
  28. Barley
  29. Oat
  30. Wheat bran
  31. Durum wheat
  32. Rye
  33. Gliadin
  34. Wheat
  35. Mustard seed

Before removing gluten, we had Emily tested for Celiac and I’m happy to say she’s not allergic to gluten, just sensitive. 

After the celiac test was done, it took us a day to remove everything in the kitchen that contained some of these items and we are slowly finding new ways to eat although some food we haven’t quite figure out how to replace or substitute.

Don’t worry, we still have lots of good things we can eat, here are some examples!


We’ve had something that kinda felt like pasta once…. 😳

I haven’t found a good cookie recipe yet 😢

And pizza without cheese is not really worth it 😳

On the positive side, Emily’s tummy felt better within a week of cleaning our eating habits!  We are not ready to start reintroducing items yet but we are looking at lowering her medication. 

I call that a win!