T’s Story of Healing Asthma & Allergies from the Root

Rick and Becky share their journey of addressing their youngest son T's severe asthma and allergy issues, which began with frequent ER visits, multiple diagnoses, and continuous medication use. Initially focused on symptomatic treatment, they shifted to a holistic approach involving Nutrition Response Testing (NRT), which revealed deeper root causes, including significant food sensitivities and gut health issues. Through extensive testing and dietary adjustments, we identified and eliminated inflammatory foods, which led to a notable improvement in T's overall health. Listen to hear their family's story.

In this episode you will learn about:

• Root causes of asthma and allergies in a 6-year-old boy

• Mold remediation, asthma treatment, and potential Lyme disease infection

• Immunotherapy for chronic infections and asthma improvement

• Alternative approaches to treating chronic illness, including the importance of understanding the root causes and using strategic therapies to heal

• Supporting a child with food allergies and sensitivities

Please note that transcripts may contain minor errors or inaccuracies. We hope you enjoy reading them and find them helpful.

Hey, you're gonna be okay. I'm your host, Elizabeth Mae, and my functional health practice helps people heal when they've exhausted traditional options. When no one can figure your health challenges out, my team helps you resolve symptoms and restores your health. You're listening to my podcast, where we'll hear stories of healing chronic illness from a root cause approach.

Thank you. Thank you, Miss Elizabeth. I spared to feel so much better when you help me.

I'm here with Rick and Becky today, and we're just gonna talk through what their experience was working with their youngest son, T. And we're just gonna talk through kind of the beginning of the approach when they came to us. They had some concerns around asthma, some allergy issues, and we progressed throughout time and eventually uncovered deeper root issues. He was one of those kids who kind of crossed over in our transition of approach. So it's really fun to kind of look at the origin of his care where he was more, we were more focused on putting out the asthma and allergy fire. And then later on, we were able to move into a root cause approach and really see even more profound healing. So, where were you guys with tea? What was your family experiencing at the time that we started care?

He kept getting diagnosed with pneumonia, and we kept um being told to give him um medicine. And he was in and out of the ER and in and out of doctors' care and using rescue inhalers pretty frequently, as well as um being tested for a bunch of allergies because we didn't know what was happening to his body. I knew that there was something bigger than um I knew there was something bigger going on in his body, and um we just decided to start peeling more layers. We had been working since he was 18 months old with a NRT practitioner who had helped us in many ways eliminate milk from his life, um and helped us uncover a lot of things, and he saw a lot of progress, but we were stunted and we felt like we were going backwards and not forwards. And so we knew that there was something bigger going on in his body.

And we started working together when T was about six. Your clarity caller, you said, you know, I have a six-year-old with asthma and we want to get to the root of it. You guys had seen an allergist, I assume, for skin testing, and you'd found like 20-ish things. Um, and even the allergy test that brought on some response for him too. Can you tell me more about that?

Yes, his allergy response. Um, they did it all over his back. He was a trooper because that's the way he is. Um, but within 24 hours, he started to have breathing issues. And um yeah, we took him to the ER shortly after that.

That was the weekend we took him to the East.

So the allergy testing did reveal some information, but it also sparked a flare. So for me, looking back now, I can say, hey, this is a body that's really, really hyper-vigilant when it comes to the immune system. And we started work in February of 2023, and he had been in and out of sickness all winter, and you all live in the northern um US. So again, still cold, still winter time, lots of plenty of triggers for him to have respiratory issues. And just to kind of educate NRT, the person you've been working with stands for nutrition response testing. So that's kind of an approach you all had used and continued to use, and I also use for my own family, just to help support ongoing sickness and kind of asking the body what it needs. So you are already in a holistic route. Um, when we met, I recommended that we start with the stool test to just kind of see like where's his immune system, where's his GI tract. A lot of times we find asthma and allergy roots in the GI tract because of its connection with the immune system. And we also did a food sensitivity test to kind of see what foods were driving inflammation. With the food sensitivity test, it's really a tool that I use to help reduce inflammation. So we wanted to get inflammation down for tea to calm all the emergent asthma activity and then be able to move forward to figuring things out. And that test did come back. And you mentioned that dairy was something you already had caught. Um, and he had much higher reaction to dairy than anything else. And there were a handful of foods that he also responded to. And I do kind of want to point out and rewind too, that you all agreed on this is our path for care, completed your deposit. And in the meantime, a past client of ours reached out and asked what your balance was and took care of it. Um, and it's always one of my favorite things is I think it's happened more than 10 times now where past clients have either gifted care to someone else or stepped in and paid for their care. And I think that's so fun and cool because it's just a power or more power to like the testament of what this stuff does. So you guys were like coming in, ready to do it, open to this stuff, and your friends kind of had your back. So when we started with the intake, just talking through T's history, you know, he had kind of a high stress disposition, very go, go, go. Um, and you guys had been through lots of other practitioners. I remember too, you guys had done a gastric emptying test. So there were some GI things going on for him. Can you tell me a little bit?

He was having he was coughing a lot at night, and the allergist didn't know if that was asthma or if that was acid reflux happening in the evening. And so that did come back positive. So then we didn't know. And an inhaler actually works for that. So um, so we didn't know what's at what's happening. Is it that he's having asthma at night? Is it that he's having acid reflux?

Right.

What's going on in this little body? And with that um food sensitivity, he told us that his body didn't like bananas. You're gonna eat bananas, and then that came back, and I was like, Oh, maybe you should listen to your kids.

Well, he had that he'd had the reflux um from the time he was a baby, and then when we found the reflux. Well, we didn't know about it, but then when the dairy, when we found out the dairy there was a dairy insensitivity, we thought that that would go away, and it sort of did, but then it came back kind of along kind of around when we got the asthma diagnosis, because then we were giving him the he was on a a regular dosage for for his inhaler, um, in addition to using it for uh for rescue purposes. So like that sort of triggered it. Yeah, it was it we kind of we we kind of just felt like we were just going around in circles because we were giving him bananas because he needed potassium. Yeah, that's what the allergist told us to do because they load them up with pot with bananas because the uh butyroll's sucking the potassium out of him, but then his body doesn't like bananas, so we were inflaming him. We were just increasing inflammation and causing the what we thought was reflux or the gagging, whatever it was. And so, yeah, in one way, so one way we were trying to help, and then the next moment we were well, we didn't know, right? You don't know what you don't know, right?

Yeah, and that's very common too, where you have something where a child is like, they are wise if they're rejecting something and they're very against something. I always say, like, let's yield to that until we know why, because they have a little intuition they listen to a lot better without 30, 40 years of adult brain kind of clouding that decision making. But even with him being on daily adver, he had the rescue inhaler, and those things were helping, but he still was presenting with tightness of chest and coughing. He had some other pieces too, some kind of cognitive neural pieces and focus stuff. Let's talk a little bit about what that was like for him when we started.

Um, we were just beginning to uncover we a little bit more about what was going on with him. He struggles to focus and follow directions. Um and it was becoming super apparent. And so we started a process of trying to figure out what what was happening in our little guy's brain. And in the process of that, the standard of care where we were working um asked us to do an EEG, and the EEG revealed spikes that were happening, abnormal spikes.

Um other symptoms of that time were speech delays, which I think had been with him just since speaking started. And he was writing some letters upside down and backwards, and there was a little bit of aggression stuff peeking through, which he has a brother, he was six. He is like a typical kid. He's going to school, he's athletic and strong. And so sometimes we were kind of trying to discern like, is this normal boy developmental stuff? Or for him, it did kind of appear to be outside the lines. And as a clinician, looking back now, um, some of that letters backwards and upside down and some dyslexia, dyspraxia, anything that's kind of switched, whether it be writing, auditory things, can be a Lyme connection symptom for kids that we want to kind of think about. But we moved into gut healing and identifying those food triggers. Historical test showed high staph and strep bacteria. He had a detox burden, and his immune system really looked okay. It was only slightly weakened. And like you said, the food sensitivity test showed banana, MSG, soy, wheat. There were several common proteins. The cow's milk was there as well and a mix of vegetables. And so at that point, we had you all remove those foods for three and six months. We started down exploring some other things. We talked about when is he coughing, when are sleep issues happening and sleep for him at that point. What was that like? I think when we started, you said he'd only slept in his bed 10 nights in his whole life and he was six.

For the entire, yeah, for the entire night. Yes. Yeah. Well, for the first 18 months, I held him from for most of the night.

Because he struggled. Yeah, he was having a hard time.

His typical, his typical bedtime would be or bedtime routine would be, you know, going to bed, putting him down 7:30, 8 o'clock, somewhere in that time frame. He would sleep until about 10 or 10 30. He would then come into our room. Um and either um and then and then either uh sleep in our room, or one of us would go back to his room and sleep in the room. Or when he was younger, yeah, I would take him down and sleep, hold him in the recliner until about two or three in the morning, um, put him back in bed, and then by like 5:30, 6 o'clock, he was either up or crawling back into our bed or something like that. So very dysregulated, disrupted um sleep for everyone in the house, except our other son.

Yeah, and you guys had like done lots of steps in the house too. You'd gotten rid of two dogs for allergy concerns. We were kind of noticing there was a lot of coughing going on at night, that refluxy kind of cough confusion. The allergist had brought in flonase because he had constant nose inflammation. And that started me down the path of asking about mold exposure and could that be a possibility for him? And I hate talking and love talking about mold exposure because it's very common. New homes, old homes, water damage, not it can be places that we maybe don't think that it would be, but we did order a mycotoxin test and an organic acids urine test, which just helps us see um fungal growth in the body. And it did show that there was ochre toxin and citronin. So suggesting several mold species, primarily aspergillus, um, through his urine. We also saw on his oat that his neurotransmitters were imbalanced, and there were some nutrient needs, some folate needs. So things were kind of coming together, and it was painting a very clear, like fungal picture, which for me that makes sense with the dairy. Like anytime you have dairy and fungal, we're gonna have exacerbation of symptoms. And at this point, you guys um mentioned, oh yeah, the allergist had mentioned that he has mold eyes and he's having some headache stuff, bed wetting was happening frequently and occasional sleepwalking. And so you guys dug into the mold idea. And what did you find? And how did that process go for you?

We survived.

We literally dug into it by destroying our house to find it.

We moved, me and the boys moved out, and um we dug in and we removed carpets upstairs. We had renovated the majority of our house.

So the only thing that we hadn't done was remove the carpet upstairs, which was easily 20 some years old, different types of carpet in like different rooms. So we started with that.

Um and it exposed some water damage that was um pre-existing water damage that we did we did not know about that was not disclosed to us. So we me and the boys went and lived with gracious friends. We have the best friends. Um makes me tear up just thinking about it. Um, but we and so me and the boys left. We continued care with you, and remediation and removal of that happened. Um, and we were able to come back. And after we uh moved back in, uh, we have seen a different side of our son, and we've seen continued healing, and we've seen so much more personality and freedom and joy and no sickness. Um, the year that we started with you, I think we went on a date at the beginning of oh, I guess it was like October or something, and we were like, how many times have we sent a message to the nurse telling her that he's sick or that we've been we were now doing the uh asthma action plan? Um we were doing that every three weeks. He would have two weeks of a flare, one week of feeling better, something would trigger him, two weeks of a flare, and at some point in there he needed to have off. So his whole kindergarten, it was like I felt like I was always, they were always, I was like, and now you give it every four hours. Um, and so we moved to post um remediation and a bunch of other work with you.

Yeah, this past this past fall, winter, he hardly missed any school beyond just normal not feeling well or a little coffee.

And it was like one one day, like before Christmas. It was, I think he had missed like one day of school, which was miraculous.

And the year before he had probably missed like 12.

Yeah, so you guys did the mold remediation in April, and during that time we were kind of just like shoring up his body and supporting with nutrients, and then we worked that summer kind of more of a germ approach where we're addressing the stuff that's there that doesn't belong. We worked through anti-inflammatories to get that down. You guys nebulize different things um that we suggested. We did drainage, we did a parasite purge because he was having symptoms there, and we worked through antifungals. He had a lot of histamine issues, which is pretty torque typical when you when you have asthma and allergies, you have histamine issues. So we really just worked on like cleaning out his body. And that August, we did a re-o and checked he was having no asthma issues, his leg and body skin were clear because he was having eczema, no more headache mentions, no more itching, reintroductions of food had all gone well. And um, he'd, like you said, went through he had gone through a little sickness that September, no need for albuterol at all. And we're gonna kind of circle back to some of that stuff. But October of that year, we were kind of chatting. You know, he'd had the EEG, speech delays, he was progressing, but there still wasn't something right. He could remember everything and really communicate well, but things were still not normal. He was sleeping through the night at that point, um, but was having some coughing creep back in, and his mood was better. There was less obsession and repetition was thinking. He was having cyclical pink eye though, so that had popped up and we were just chatting. Um, and you'd mentioned that the NRT person noticed that there could be like a Lyme Bartonella. And I actually came to the conversation there to say, like, hey, this is probably a pathway we need to go down because we're seeing a little bit of recurrence after we've remediated mold, we've addressed his body, there's probably something else here. And you guys do live in a Lyme endemic area in the northern US, and so it's not out of question at all, but we did decide at that point to test for Lyme Bartonella coinfections. Um, and Becky, you are familiar with the therapy that we use for Lyme. You had done this several years ago. Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience was like for you and why you did it?

Yeah, so we were working with the other practitioner and she recognized in my body that there was the Epstein Barr virus present. And it turns out that when I was a teenager, I was hospitalized for that and out of school for three months. So I she encouraged me to move forward with some immunotherapy to help my body um learn how to fight that um and put that to sleep for a while. So um I had already gone through that process. So when you mentioned immunotherapy, I was like, oh, I've done that before. I've used those boxes before, I've seen results with that. Um, and so it it and that was the first time I remember us going and being like looking at the ticket price and being like, oh my gosh, what are we about to invest in? Um, and then we're um realizing that the benefit, seeing the benefit in my own body, because I just got used to that type of fatigue and struggle, honestly, um, that I thought it was normal. And then to be on the other side of it and realize that that's not the way life's supposed to be, and that my body was on hyper alert and not fighting the correct things. Um, it was good. So when you suggested it, I was like, yes.

Yeah, and it was really encouraging to me at that point because we found this chronic infections approach after COVID, after we saw lots of immune systems not going back to balance, lots of past infections coming back out. It started with the client who had shingles and it just kept going over and over and over again, despite all other signs pointing to it needing to be in remission per how we had addressed it. Um, and we were dabbling in using the same therapy for Lyme and exploring that and hearing from you that you'd done it several years before and it had put your EBV in remission, and you no longer had those symptoms, was such an encouragement to me because we were on the way with it. We did get testing back for tea and we found that he did have Babesia, which is a co-infection of Lyme. It's a parasite that infects white blood cells, anaplasma, another co-infection, Bartonella, mycoplasma, which has a lot of connection to pneumonia asthma presentation. So that was a big ding-ding-ding for us on the journey to addressing um his issues. And he did have past strep issues. We'd seen that on GM abstract testing, and of course, strep, we tend to know more about that. So the first immune phase we did in December 2023, we we addressed kind of half of that and took an approach knowing that his body was kind of delicate and prone to inflammation. We used the low-dose immune-specific immune therapy and we started with Borellia, Babesia, Anaplasma, and strep. And what was T like during this time that we started into this? And maybe even what was it like this time versus when we addressed the mold initially?

Um, he what first of all, he's a trooper and he takes all your supplements. And uh so I feel like because he's a trooper and he, I mean, he sent me messages that says, Thank you, Elizabeth, you've helped me heal, right? Um, so he is pretty aware of his body. Um and he and we've learned to trust his experience. Um, because he would say, Mommy, I'm so tired. I just need to rest. Um and you really encouraged us, like his we're retraining his body, like when he says he's fatigued, like let the boy rest. Um so that was our biggest thing. Like it was rest him needing to rest. We didn't really see symptoms. I did start tracking certain things when we gave him certain immunotherapies, maybe it was the second round. Um, I did start seeing some coughing in the night, which causes a little bit of anxiety for Madre and Padre. Um, because it's like, are we is this the day that it's we're gonna go back to the way it was? Or um, but a lot of times it's just been like a couple coughs and then he falls back asleep, or he's normally always asleep.

But um and I remember moods, moods too seem to be kind of improving, but then also ebbing and flowing quite a lot during that lime period.

Yeah, it did ebb and flow. Um but again, you know, we were we were not seeing any issues with his asthma. Like at that point, we were what?

Yeah, three, four months.

At that point, we were like three, four months. Of him not needing it to use his inhaler on a regular basis.

In his allergist, we went to him and I was like, Yes, he hasn't used an inhaler because you just wait until the fall. And I was like, Okay, okay. All right. I'm happy to be wrong. I think there's a place for all the professional.

But at the worst, at the worst time of the year, supposedly for someone who's dealing with asthma, that he was perfectly fine.

And at that point, he had he was on no asthma medication at all. He endured that month of addressing Lyme and strat very well. He was still having the spikes. So can you tell me a little more of what that was like? They were happening awake and asleep.

Well, it was so it was so he had a 72-hour EEG. And on the 72-hour EEG, it showed some spike activity. Um, primarily in the evening. I mean at night. It was impacting his sleep. But then his during the day, we would see times where he would um like slow down and kind of just stare off into space. And we didn't know what that was, and it would almost be like he couldn't hear us, but he was still in the room.

It was just it was subtle. And if you weren't, if you weren't looking for it, or if you didn't know what that could could be, it could just kind of look like, or he just kind of spaced out for a second. Like we've all kind of had those moments where we're in a meeting or in the room, and then we're like, What did you just say? Um, so it was it was things like that, but uh knowing that we had done the testing that was that we were kind of more attuned to looking for that to to see, or um and even he got to the point where we talked to him about it and we said there's something going on with your brain and your body, and we're addressing a lot of things.

You tell mommy and daddy if there's anything you ever feel, um and he could he could communicate.

He's saying like mommy, like my arm twitched, and I like I didn't I didn't tell my arm to move or something like that.

I think he said that like once or twice, and then he also would say, Hey mom, my brain did that thing. So for a six-year-old slash seven-year-old, it was really good that he, I mean, he has a lot of self-awareness. Um and more recently we've asked him about that. And when we went for a second opinion, and um he says that it's not happening anymore. Um and then when we went to the second opinion and they they did a repeat test, she said she saw no abnormal um activity on that. Now, does that mean it's a it's a snapshot of 20 minutes of his life? Um, but I think based on the fact of what we are seeing on a daily basis, we've seen increased deep sleep for him, um, which is so good and so healing for his little body that it has the ability to do that now. And we've seen significantly less sickness and we're seeing less aggression. We're seeing we're just seeing him be who he was created to be.

Yeah, just yeah, it just overall picture and just all the all the elements, and we've just we've been peeling this onion layer by layer by layer, and the more layers we've uncovered, the I think we've yeah, we've just seen his body not only uncovered, but then we've uh supported his body. Giving his body the ability to do what what it was designed to do, and yeah, we're just seeing we're just seeing so many positive results from it.

Yeah, and he's he's still in process, so he will finish his therapy mid-end of August. In the second round, we addressed Candida and Mycoplasma and Bartonella, and he's still have you guys had to nebulize at all or use inhalers in the wild?

No, still no inhaler. We will nebulize if like it appears that he's getting a snotty nose or something like that just to support his body, but it's more in a proactive, yeah, um a proactive stance than a restorative stance at this point.

And we did that for maybe a couple of days this past winter.

I don't know, we did it faithfully in the first couple of phases.

But towards the end of the month, towards the I don't remember, that was a long time ago. But but towards the but towards the end of the winter, you know, in the in the you know, colder months, January, February, or maybe towards the end of February, we really didn't do much.

Yeah, we've stopped more, yeah. We haven't done it. You told us we could stop. I think we were nervous to stop because we're like, can we stop?

We can always go back if we need to, but also you guys recently, so it's May now. You recently went to the pediatrician, had lungs shut down. What was the result there? Uh there was not nothing to report in his line. Totally clear. We went for his well visit. So um things that we're still working on, you guys have also on the food front. He's eating bananas, we're off of histamine supports, he's introduced cooked in dairy, that seems to be going well.

Um soy. I mean, I have not done wheat or like dairy. He would really like a slice of cheese and a bowl of ice cream, but not yet. Maybe this summer now.

That's fair. Big question for you guys. Would you go through the process that you've gone through again? Both parts, what's been hard about it?

The best part about it was learning that we could put all the drops in the same container. So if anybody's about to do immunotherapy, they can all go, not the vials, just the um, no, I'm just kidding. Uh yes, we would go through it. It has been, it's been a lot. Like we had to be committed to like it's hard to go on vacation when your kid can't eat wheat, dairy, or soy. Um, you get very creative and um and helping other people understand that it's serious, like, please don't feed my child that. Um that is that can be a stressor. But in terms of what we've walked through, you've been so what I've really appreciated is the way that you've educated and not just said do this, but you have helped us understand why and even how things work together. So it's like a foundation that is being built upon and the note session notes that you provide us at the end of each one, because sometimes it can be drinking out of a fire hose. Um the fact that you have provided with that tool um so that I feel empowered as the mama and can communicate it to Rick is just a really powerful thing. Like I still am messaging you quite a bit, but um it's not out of a place of not being given information. It's more out of a part of wanting to understand so that if something happens later, we know the right questions to ask or um can understand the correlations between things.

Yeah, yeah, this process has definitely opened my eyes up to the the fact that there are alternative options, right? There are there are a lot of things and there there's a there's a place for um you know there's a place for traditional medicine, there's there's a place for all of those things. Um and understanding I think I think for me, understanding um some of the science behind this approach was also helpful. Like like I think like I mentioned earlier, like our our bodies are designed to do some amazing things if we just let you know can just enable them to do that and get some of the blockers out of the way. And once you get those blockers out of the way, you just see some amazing results. So yeah, uh, I think what's been hard is just it, you definitely, like Becky said, you definitely have to be committed to it. Um, it's not for the faint of heart.

Um and you have to be a detective and ask questions.

Um we definitely look at we definitely look at things a lot differently than we did before. So even when he would have some sort of symptom or whatnot, um like you talk about like we now have mold eyes, right? Not that we have mold in our eyes, we see things in that in that lens, like okay, could there be mold here or could there be something that's going on that triggers something else? Um, so I think that's what's I think that's a benefit that I've gotten from this process. Like I see things from a different perspective. Um and yeah, and I I I tell people a lot, you know, you're gonna pay for it, you're either gonna pay for it now or you're gonna pay for it later.

So we might as well go through the process now while we're while we have and I much prefer to be out of the ER as much as we enjoyed the Lego that he was given. He's trying to grab you with Legos in the ER now. Um, so I prefer to be out of the ER. And I recently asked um our son, like, how does it feel to not be sick all the time? And he was like, it feels so good. Um, and so he's getting to live his childhood and not like I remember we were told by the asthma and allergy specialist, your son won't really be able to play outside in the winter and like because it will be too hard on his lungs. And before Elizabeth, that is a hundred percent true. He would go out and kick a ball and he wouldn't even be he'd just be watching the other kids play and he'd be having a hard time this winter. He was down that like skiing, he was um playing outside, snowball fighting, building forts, like all the things. And he didn't cut, he came in probably because he got a snowball in his face from his older brother, not because he couldn't breathe. Um, and so night and day difference he gets to play. And even now we have pollen all over our black car, and he's not impacted by it at all. However, he is allergic on paper to all of the things that are currently.

He's playing, he's playing baseball on a dirt field, um, and it doesn't bother.

Yes, and he's allergic to dust. Doesn't bother me. But I don't think he's really allergic to dust. I think if we were to retest and do that skin test, which I probably will only do if it's very necessary, um, I think we would find that those things are not necessarily yet present.

T is a really good example of how root issues ricochet. We have all these other things that just like build, build, build, build, build on top of the original issue. And he's also a really good example, particularly because he's a child, but we believe in our practice that every human is made to flourish and that modern living and life, things like mold and indoor houses where we're inside more than we used to be, um, Lyme even in its advent since the 70s in America. Those sort of things get in the way. And when we're strategically supported body by body, what I did for T is not the same thing that I do for other children that we see with asthma. There are very specific things to each child that we use to discern what therapies we use. And we can see now, you know, we're in May, he'll be complete with a therapy in August, that all of his supplementation and therapies and things that we've done, strategically nebulizing all the time, um, behavioral and food things that we did, those are for a time and for a purpose. And we will continue to wean out and off of those and reintroduce T back to a normal life. And I love that he's still a few months from the very end and you're seeing that. The other last thing that I want to cover, and I think as a person who suffered with chronic illness for many years, is there's just a real lack of understanding by other people who have not experienced it, and rightly so, because it's a bizarre thing to live with a kid who can't go outside in the winter, you know, that's not normal. But being loved well during chronic illness is weird because people don't know what to do, they don't know how to help. And I think your family experienced so many different things throughout the past. But what were some of those ways that people loved you all well or loved your son well as you were working through all the stages of healing through chronic illness?

Oh, I like that question. I mean, people let us live in their house. Um and we still went on vacations. Um I don't know.

I think they just I think I think practically, yeah.

Well means they helped us rip out the carpet. We had people rip out the car.

Um, so just you know, things like that. Um, and then obviously practically, you know, someone letting us live in their house for 39 days.

Um and when we have br we have we have a brunch at our house, and there's always people who are willing to um have gluten and dairy-free options. Um and they don't really ask questions, they just know and honor that. It makes it because it that was a huge struggle for his little heart. Like to be different at the age of six and have the food restrictions that he did. It was really hard, but thankfully there's lots of options. Your cookbook is a good one. Give a little hey, hey, may cookbook. Um, but like there's now tools that we have that and our friends were willing to embrace some of those and listen to our stories.

I was gonna say listening, I think was the biggest thing. Um, I think people just listen to what we were saying and maybe they didn't understand, or maybe they didn't, you know, maybe they didn't agree, but they were like, okay, that's what they're having to deal with. Like we can we can either help or you know, just acknowledge that. And yeah, so not making it not making our son feel um like he was different, um, and doing things to be more inclusive, whether it was like Becky said, uh providing food that would that he could eat or being in situations where you know he could go to a birthday party and there could be an option for him um besides the cake that everyone else was getting. Um and just the yeah, that was hard.

The first birthday party we went to, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I thought they were just serving cake. What is this pizza they're pulling out? And so it's like, oh, now I have different questions to ask before a party to protect my little boy's heart. Um, but yeah, I feel like they just surrounded and listened, and we um were just super cared for, and it's more like his school allowed us to provide all the snacks. So he has his own snack bag. So um, and they were cool with him having two snacks so that he mixed protein and fiber and you know, bag in the same snack instead of just eating pretzels. So we had people who listened to us and allowed and allowed him to thrive even in the midst of something different.

Yeah.

I love all those ways that people honored and believed despite understanding, because even though you guys have gone through it and I have taught you a lot, I know that there are parts that are difficult to understand and you have to just trust me and see what's going on and and see your child progress in there. They're like, okay, we don't understand this nuance part of why Elizabeth asked us to do that. But it's even harder for people who are watching from the outside, like, okay, this is serious. They're in the ER all the time, and this child is having breathing issues, and they're gonna do what? And we're gonna just change his food. And I just appreciate so much when people do choose to believe and be curious and just trust the process. And I always say, too, when someone is a prospective client, that the best answer that I have for them is to talk to a previous client or to listen to a story because it's really something that is a whole new idea, and there's just so much baggage that you bring into a situation when you've gone through trying to find answers for your health or your child's health. So to be believed is really important. Um, and I think too to be educated along the way on why you're doing the hard work that you're doing. So I appreciate y'all's time, your willingness to share, um, and your commitment to to helping your boy boys heal.

Yeah, and he now is a completely it's a completely different experience for him. So I and people who see him remember his snotty nose and his coughing. And now they're like, Oh, I love it.

I hope you're leaving encouraged, curious, and hopeful. If you learned something, I'd love for you to share this episode with a friend. Hey, we're all healing together. You can learn more about my practice, our team, and what it's like to work with us at heyheymae.com. I teach lots on Instagram and answer questions each Monday. My Instagram handle is @HeyHeyElizabethMae. And my cookbook, Hey Hey Everyday, is available on heyheymae.com and Amazon. Happy healing.