FPIES Fundraiser at The Pizza Ranch!!

I am always looking for ways to increase awareness on FPIES.  Not that everyone all over needs to know all the nitty-gritty details and in and outs of the allergy, or should ever know the ins and outs and all around of it.   I don't ever expect others to cater to my son's allergy or change the world because of it; or give us any degree of sympathy (in fact I'd prefer if sympathy was left for other diagnosis).   What I do look for is raising awareness of the diagnosis itself, so that if someone were to hear of intolerance's of this nature in an infant, they would have a path to look down when ruling in or out a diagnosis for treatment plan.  I also look to raise awareness in the community we live in, not so people would cater or be sympathetic, but that people can have empathy to the needs of caring for a child with a chronic illness that involves food- many foods.

This past spring, my sister held a benefit for our little man.  It was extremely successful in that it raised a lot of awareness in our home town community, 3 local newspapers did articles, people wrote to us from reading those articles, and of course people attended the benefit to meet our little man and ask their questions and learn about what FPIES means to him, and our family.   At that same time, in the spirit of raising awareness, I also booked "Tip Night" at a local Pizza Ranch to raise awareness in the community we live in now.  Unfortunately, we had to reschedule that as Little Man's needs were too high at that time, so we postponed it for this fall.   It became scheduled for Oct.24th.   Of course little man's needs have not slowed down much, but I decided we needed to go ahead with it anyway.  We were blessed to have friends that were able to help- help advertise it and help work at it; because little man was actually in the hospital the week prior to the fundraiser!

The FPIES Foundation helped in making an announcement flyer for it, that a neighborly friend helped hang up around town.

It was a great event.  Pizza Ranch has a program built in for non-profit fundraiser events such as this.   It is called "Tip Night".  You bring the waiters, you earn the tips.  

I set up an informative table including a video tribute of Little Man's FPIES slideshow, some other informative FPIES print outs, and an outline description of FPIES I wrote. Of course, displayed was little man's safe foods.  I also decorated the tables with little FPIES tidbits.  It was a successful night!!