Mothers Intuition

Have you ever had an instinct? An instinct that begins as a gnawing...Then grows into a raging burn; a burning instinct that something is wrong...

Your baby continues to get sick from the very foods he is supposed to thrive on. I did. I am a mom of a little boy just diagnosed with FPIES.

And that burning feeling now? Extinguished. My instincts? Stronger than ever. Guiding me, with my faith, as we navigate through the murky waters of our new world created by something called FPIES.

"Faith is not about everything turning out OK; Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out."

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Awareness is Action! Food Allergy Awareness Week 2013

If you follow this blog, you are likely aware that I am BIG on raising FPIES Awareness.  Maybe it's my personality, but I have always viewed awareness as an action. I am not simply raising awareness to the diagnosis but in what it means, and what ways we can be stretched to learn, and to be helpful.   To be empowered, and to empower others.

In the beginning of this journey, I was privileged to have a pediatrician for our boys that was good about knowing what ways she could empower me.   One of those ways was (and some may not understand this but thankfully she understood enough about me to know I needed it)....was to say she was stumped.  After week upon week of bringing Little Man in to her office, repeated visits for new symptoms or to review current symptoms, practically begging and often crying for help, thinking that if I just told her about this new symptom or did I forget to mention that incident; will I get closer to some answer she in her knowledge and experience, is considering?  Then, one day, she sat down and said, "I just don't know". Words probably easier for me to hear than for her to say (yes, words easier for me to hear).  I remember that day still so well because it changed my thinking, it changed me from waiting for someone to have an answer, to me finding an answer. It empowered me. She didn't know, but I did. I didn't know about FPIES then; but I knew my son, and I knew something wasn't right.  I would research day and night,and write down everything,and read every journal article I could get a hold of (which was only less than a dozen at that time).

Once we did finally find the diagnosis, I entered support groups, and I found myself surrounded by families in so many similar situations.  The need to be empowered to know how to care for this child with this rare, little understood allergy is so great, it is so needed. A mother has the intuition to care for her child from before they are even born....a connection so deep- poetic words (that I do not have) can only begin to describe.  What we don't know instinctively  we instinctively know where/how to learn.   But then, your child has this allergy that doesn't follow any rules and that robs you of the basic need to nourish them and you feel like you're standing alone and your toolbox is empty, or the tools you have in it don't fit at all and you lose time trying to use them, trying to make them fit.

So, during Food Allergy Awareness week, above other times in the year, my awareness is increased and I hope yours is too, and you will help spread the information about Food Protein Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome so that more families and more medical providers, are empowered to learn more, and become equipped with some basic tools for thriving through this disordered allergy of the gastrointestinal system.

Awareness is key, Awareness does matter. Awareness is Action. 

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful. I envy your ability to word complex things in a way that ends up being easily understood by someone who may not know anything about the emotional impact FPIES has on a family.

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  2. Yay! If I log into my computer I can comment! (Took me a while to figure out...)

    Love this, Joy! I love the story of how you got empowered. I don't think your pediatrician knows what kind of tsunami of action she unleashed that day, and the FPIES world thanks her - and you - for it!

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