sriracha communion

I have been selfish today.  Absorbed by my own agenda.  Inattentive.  

Ick.

Tonight's Communion of pizza and wine, with a smear of sriracha.

Oh I love the metaphors.

And again I'm made new...

banana icecream

Da na na na na na nana
Walk this way
Walk this way
Walk this way

This is what happens when you're a child of the 90's.  Aerosmith sings in your brain whenever you hit upon something especially unlikely and fantastically mind-blowingly amazing.

Or maybe that's just me?

Well, FOR FACT, Aerosmith is here for this icecream.  Crank the bass.

Take 6 bananas.  Peel them.  Cut them into about 8 pieces each banana.  Freeze the pieces on a cookie sheet.  Put the frozen bananas in the food processor and chop the heck out of them.  They magically turn into the smoothest "icecream" you can possibly imagine.  No dairy, no sugar, no nothing.

Add whatever toppings strike your fancy and eat up.  I like crunchy peanut butter and a few squirts of chocolate syrup.

Also good...
almonds
blueberries
caramel syrup and a dash of salt
a snickers bar
marshmallows
dark cherries and dark chocolate pieces

Its a life-changer, people. 

Da na na na na na na nana
Walk this way....

for real

You know how sometimes you get so overwhelmed by whatever it is, that you feel it even tightening up your hair follicles?  And then God blows this little poof of air in your direction... and suddenly you're breathing again, and can manage to laugh and pee yourself a little?

That was my week.

Eva has had a dry cough for the last six months.  We have tried...

cough drops

cough syrup

2 allergy meds

prescription nasal spray

prescription allergy med

inhaler

high powered antibiotic

Nothing works.  I asked for a food panel at the doctor, suspecting an allergy to dairy, which sometimes accompanies gluten intolerance.

We found out this week she is severely allergic to sesame seed and moderately allergic to corn.

CORN.

We are Americans.  Our bodies are made of water, plastic, and corn!!!

Do you know what you substitute for gluten-full ingredients?  Corn-full ingredients.  Think corn tortillas instead of flour.

FML.

I couldn't bring myself to tell her for a couple of days.  

But...

OH PRAISE THE LORD, BUT........

Smitten kitten.

The sun shone, the clouds parted, and Dr. Davis fell from the sky.

He's an MD who owns Prairie Health and Wellness in Wichita.

Its a cross between a doctor's office, spa, and Private Practice (you know, that show).  Look at the chairs in the patient rooms!!  It smells like Origins, has books like Wheat Belly in the waiting room, you serve yourself Tazo tea while you wait, and there's this amazing herbal lotion in the bathroom.  And most importantly, he looked Eva in the eye and gave her confidence that this is going to be even better than just okay.

Dr. Davis spent an hour with us and will run a full food allergy panel (testing for 90 foods, and levels of reactions) for Eva.  He talked about kefir (ahhhh! my beloved kefir), quoted Michael Pollan, understood immediately why I give the kids local honey for allergies, and assured us that we'll learn what's causing her cough, treat it with nutritious eating, and then will give her a prescription for an inhaler or whatever is needed.

While, we are still bummed.....

.....its beyond belief that this doctor exists.  We are so relieved!

When I had a job where I did home visits, I went to see a family every few weeks that had the most amazing couches.  Plush, nice, very we are people with a house and a real job furniture.  I thought about those couches often when I looked at my bare, college furniture abode and wondered when I would be grown up enough to have furniture like that.  And those exact couches are in my living room now.  I craved something like them when I saw them, never thinking they would actually be mine someday.

I know its just couches.

But that kind of "someday" talk is the same way I've carried on about doctors.

  

And we found him.

He's a real live MD....family practice doctor.....with great knowledge about nutrition and wellness....and interested in finding root causes not just treating symptoms.  

To vaccinate or not vaccinate?  He says vaccinate.  There.  See?  Less wackadoo than me even!

I'm not throwing our pediatrician under the bus.  His office is awesome, and gives us great care.  But they just plain don't know what we need them to know about food allergies.  They care deeply for our kids, but have not been able to take the time needed to know what we need them to about what "toxic" food does to someone like Eva, and are therefore too quick to medicate with steroids and antibiotics.

So, here we go....

Two years ago we bravely became gluten-free (see the tab to the right for that whole rundown), and now we take it even further.  It totally changed Eva's life for the better....this will too!