ABOUT ME

Hi! Welcome to Plantains for Michael!

This blog came out of from my experiences while breastfeeding my two allergy babies.

My allergy journey actually started much earlier, when I was a teenager. I had just got my ears pierced and was excited to wear a new pair of earrings. Unfortunately, it ended poorly with angry and swollen ears. Nickel allergies run in our family and we were certain that I had it after this experience. At first, I couldn't wear nickel with jewelry, but seemed fine with touching things like doorknobs and other metal objects (which normally contain nickel) and eating high nickel foods. After my appendectomy, I started to react to dairy and high nickel foods. I started to have pain after I ate and hand swelling when I touched metal. My migraines got worse and my joint pain and injuries as well. Unbeknownst to me, nickel titanium staples were used and left internally to close the appendix stump. Over the years, my symptoms were chalked up to many different things. I was never made aware that I had metal staples internally, even when I had to get my external staples removed early, which were closing my appendectomy incision. 

Almost 20 years later, I found out that I had metal staples internally after reading a post by the Surgical Clip Problems (Implant Metal Allergy) Education & Support and requesting an abdominal x-ray. I completed additional allergy testing to show that I was reacting to the staples. I flew to another state to see a specialist to have the staples removed, which resolved a lot of the pain. I am very thankful to the Surgical Clip Problems Facebook group for their advocacy. I would have never found out that I had metal staples without them. 

In the meantime, I had two amazing and wonderful boys. Both of them had severe and numerous food allergies as babies. I had to go on a very restricted diet, total elimination diet (TED), in order to safely breastfeed them. In the process, I learned a ton about food allergies, metal allergies, elimination diets,  Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome (FPIES), and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). When I was breastfeeding my youngest, Michael, he reacted to so many foods. Luckily, we were able to find some foods that he tolerated well. One of those staples was plantains. Many shopping carts of plantains have been consumed by both of us to date. Thus, plantains for Michael was born. 

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