Alimentum RTF Challenge, are we ready?

Ok, so if you follow my blog you're probably wondering why I haven't updated.   I'm not superstitious by any means but there is something about FPIES and writing something out....I like to be sure before I put into words what 29,000 people could potentially read.   And we've had a busy and sometimes muddy 6weeks.  (this post is backdated to reflect the accurate timeline)

The decision is made to challenge Alimentum Ready To Feed (Ali RTF), it is a challenge because he has reacted to both casein (dairy) and tapioca before...although we've never been sure if his tapioca was FPIES or dissacharide deficiency related, we've simply avoided- it made him very, very sick and necessitated a hospital admission to recover.  We plan for the hospital challenge, to observe for both acute or chronic reactions, since Little Man has more chronic reactions than acute and this isn't a food we can shelve for varied symptoms, we need to be sure we looked at everything and that his symptoms are logged carefully if needed to look at them retrospectively.

We prepare for the hospital stay, a planned 3 days to assess all symptoms and tolerance.   We plan on 3 days but we prepare for more- knowing little man always seems to throw us some curve balls.    The days before, we start to get nervous, nervous about making him sick, nervous about his failing PICC line and what we'll do if this doesn't work.  The PICC that was scheduled to be converted to a port just a week prior, a decision based on his inability to tolerate the food trials we had done at home for the past 2months; but a line infection scare left us rethinking things at the last minute, deciding that the benefit of tolerating the Alimentum RTF is worth the risk of a reaction being that it has been 2yrs. since he has had a dairy derivative (in a similar formula).

Excited? Yes, that if he passes Ali RTF- we could have a supplement to his hemp milk formula and we could just BE- just take food trials longer and only when he's ready instead of pushing him.   We could make plans easier, we could see little man at a baseline for more than a week before we move on to the next step.   We can just breath.

Nervous?  Yes!  Little Man hasn't had a food pass since the summer of 2010!  His body hasn't accepted a new food for 18mo.! (another post).  Will it now?  If he isn't ready for dairy or tapioca, do we risk re-sensitizing him and having to wait longer to trial it again?  And of course, there is the fear of making him sick and having nothing to build a formula from.  And....will he even drink it?