Well-Meaning Person: So, what's going on with Little Girl? She's sick?
Me: She's been getting sick. She has a corn intolerance, so if she eats anything with corn in it she kind of loses her mind. If she eats enough of it she throws up and is just miserable.
WMP: Corn? Wow I've never heard of that before. How'd you figure that out? Were you feeding her a lot of corn and she just got sick?
Me: No, it turns out corn is in pretty much everything in the world - especially processed convenience food that you can buy in a box. It builds up in her system over time so it starts slowly. But eventually she vomits.
WMP: Oh. Are you sure it's corn? Maybe she just had a bug. Or maybe she was just in a phase.
Me: No, it's corn. When we eliminated corn, the symptoms went away and when she eats corn by accident they come back. Her behavior even changes.
WMP: Really? Are you sure she's not just being a 2-year-old? Have you talked to her doctor?
Me: It's hard to tell sometimes in the moment, but usually with prolonged freakouts we are later able to attribute them to an accidental corn exposure. You'd probably change your behavior if your tummy really hurt too. We did talk to her doctor. We got lots of tests and gave her lots of medicine (which probably had corn in it) and saw lots of different doctors. She didn't get better until we eliminated corn.
WMP: Allergic to corn huh? So no corn on the cob for her, right?
Me: Yeah. Or tortilla chips. Or regular chips. Or candy. Or pizza. Or granola bars, bananas, cereal, really anything I don't make myself with safe ingredients.
WMP: Wait. All that stuff has corn in it? Bananas?
Me: Yeah. Watch King Corn. It was an eye opener.
WMP: So will she grow out of it?
Me: I don't know. For now, we are adjusting because we want her to feel well and be happy.
WMP: I hope she grows out of it!
Sometimes I call the intolerance an "allergy" depending on my audience. I find the word "intolerance" often causes the listener to tune out and write me off as that mom. But, since my child won't have an anaphylactic reaction to corn, I usually choose to use the proper term so as not to minimize the life-threatening nature of a true allergy.
Mostly, the only problem with this conversation is that I have it all the time and it almost always goes the same way. So I'm kinda sick of it.
But there are a few other things that bother me.
1) Too few people have heard of a corn intolerance or allergy. That's no one's fault, but I do hope to raise awareness.
2) Too few people truly realize the hold that corn has on our lives in the United States. Again, watch King Corn. The upshot: there is absolutely no money in growing corn other than what the government will pay corn growers. Therefore, corn is CHEAP and thus used for purposes other than what nature intended. It's used to take shortcuts. Corn is found in places it has no business being.
3) This is where I start to get fired up. The question, "Did you talk to her doctor?" suggests to me that we somehow took matters into our own hands and there are people who know better than us who should be handling the situation. We did take matters into our own hands, because those people didn't know better and couldn't help us. They don't see our child every day or even once a week, and if it hadn't been for my veggie puff discovery, and our independent investigations, things would be a lot worse now.
4) "Well, I hope she grows out of it." I know people who say this mean well. Of course they don't want her to live a life of deprivation or be in pain. But it bothers me to hope or wish that our child will be anything other than how she is. I feel that loving my child means to accept that she has a corn intolerance (or insert other characteristic there). I will help her make the most of it, but wishing the intolerance away isn't going to achieve anything. One day she will get to a place in her life where she can decide on her own whether or not to try eating corn again. She will know the corny foods and the possible reactions because we will have educated her on those things. If she grows out of it, great. But I don't "hope" or "wish" she does. I accept and love who she is now without waiting for her to change in a way that's more convenient for me. She is my corny girl, and we have gained a wealth of knowledge through this experience that I would never want to un-know. Thank you, Little Girl, for being just the way you are.
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