Vacation: Fun and Food

Today we spent most of the day hanging out on Coronado Island. The island is just across the bridge from where our hotel is. It is so pretty on the island it almost looks like a movie set. All the grass and the flowers are done just perfectly. We walked down onto the beach and climbed on the rocks right by the ocean.

Jesse at CoronadoAshley at Coronado

Next we drove over to the parking garage that overlooks the San Diego airport. We watched a show on airports not too long ago that explained how tricky this airport is to land at. To land at this airport the pilot needs to maneuver through downtown and then clear the parking garage right before the runway. Technically, people aren’t allowed to be up there, but we went anyways. Dad just stared the guy down until he let us through. We got out of the car just in time to see a plane fly over and land, then a guy came and told us we had to leave. But at least we got our pictures first.

San Diego runwayPlane landing

Then we drove over the see the famous Unconditional Surrender statue. It was made from a photograph of a WWII sailor kissing a nurse. So of course we had to get our picture taken next to it doing the same thing.

Kissing statue

Lastly, we headed to Peohe’s for a graduation celebration dinner. This is one of Dad’s favorite restaurants to go to while he is here, and I can see why. It was delicious! He was even fancy and had a special message printed on our menus. We had an awesome view of San Diego Bay with the mountains in the background.

Peohe'sFamily dinnerSpecial menus

Eating out was kinda a big deal for me. Because of my allergies I really don’t eat out anymore. I’m pretty sure the last time was in October for our anniversary, which made me pretty sick. I was pretty nervous, but I took plenty of medicine (Gastrocrom) and I’m still okay so far. I was really brave and even had a piece of coconut crusted onion rings from our appetizer. I went with what I’ve read is the safest go-to meal to limit the amount of mystery sauces and flavorings. Grilled fillet minion with steamed veggies. It was so yummy!

Steak dinner

 

Gastrocrom for Food Allergies

I have had quite a week trying to figure out how this new medicine, Gastrocrom, works.  There is a bit of a learning curve on how much to take depending on what food I’m eating and how much I’m eating.  Overall it works fairly well… if I take the right amount.

It comes in these individual ampules of 5mL, and you mix them into water (plain water only) and drink it immediately.  It has no taste so it’s not at all unpleasant.  Then you have to wait half an hour before eating so that it has time to take effect.  I’ve figured out by trial and error that I need to take two doses before eating and then one dose about an hour after eating.Medicine with water

Gastrocrom works by preventing the release of inflammatory chemicals such as histamines from mast cells.  So while the medicine is in my system, my body doesn’t react to the foods I’m allergic to.  The problem I was having this week was that the medicine was wearing off while the food was still in my stomach.  I ate a huge meal (our anniversary dinner at Outback) and was fine perfectly fine for about two hours.  Then it hit me… hard.  I got the super bad headache (from the soy), and overwhelming nausea (from the wheat).  So that’s when I added the second half-dose after eating, while the food was still in my stomach.  I was able to eat my Outback leftovers with no problems.

I think I’ve got it mostly figured out now.  However, I am still experiencing some of the lasting effects of the foods such as needing my inhaler more often again and more ear/throat aggravations.  I think I still need to be avoiding the foods for the most part, but this week we’ve been enjoying lots of the foods we had been missing out on the last couple of weeks.Medicine box