About a year ago, I began my OIT and SLIT journey. For those of you who don't know, OIT (oral immunotherapy) and SLIT (sublingual immunotherapy) are two forms of potential treatment for food allergies. It's honestly pretty complicated, but it involves eating my allergen daily and updosing it with the goal of increased tolerance. So for the past year, I've been flying out to Oakland, California, every couple weeks for three-day long appointments with my doctor. I've been doing OIT to egg, peanut, cashew, and pistachio, and SLIT to all the other tree nuts, carrots, peas, and cantaloupe. Long story short, it worked! I can now eat foods with may contain statements, yay!!! Who knew?? Although I'm obviously still very allergic, it's amazing to know that we do now have a bit of a safety net. And already it's been life-changing! If you're super surprised by this though, you're not alone. The weird thing is that even though this happened months ago, I haven't told anyone. I didn't blog or Instagram about it, and most of my classmates still have no idea about my nightly doses. Yes, it is a huge accomplishment, but I guess it's also a bit scary. For thirteen years, I've been told to not even touch these foods, and now I could eat a bite of them. My family has had to fight with my school for every right we have in my 504 plan, and everyone at school has known about my allergies since kindergarten. It's basically become part of my identity! But now that I can tolerate a lot more of my allergens, it feels so weird contradicting all that. For example, I can't tell my teacher that I don't need to sit at my own isolated desk anymore when it took so much fighting with the school to get that policy in the first place. Plus, it might be hard for others to understand exactly how my food allergies are changed now. Technically, my allergies are the exact same, or maybe worse, than they were before treatment. The only thing that changed is just that we've tricked my body into thinking I can tolerate a tiny bit of it now. This means that I can't stop constantly being cautious, and we still can't let down our guard. The second I don't take my dose or something goes awry, it's all back to normal. With that in mind, no one except my family knew that I got to try my first M&M two months ago. Yep, that's right…M&Ms!! I never dreamed I would ever eat one! Plus, this Halloween was soo incredible for me, as I could eat Twix, KitKats, M&Ms, Sweet Tarts, Gobstoppers, Nerds, Crunch bars, Hershey chocolate, and so much more! I've gotten to try Costco pizza, Wendy's, Boudin bread, Whataburger, and even Ghirardelli. These have all been huge milestones for me, and it's opened up a whole world of food. It's crazy to think that just a year ago I was skeptical my allergies would ever get better! Telling people and getting used to this will be incredibly hard, and I need to remember to not let down my guard. Who knows what could happen in the future. All I know now is that even though it has brought new challenges, my OIT and SLIT treatment has definitely paid off! Previous Post: The Donut Incident
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