I mentioned the other day that we tried Andrew on Cashew Butter instead of Peanut Butter. The peanut butter gives him migraines. They are pretty bad. The good news is that if he does not eat peanut butter, he does not get migraines except on the rare occasion. That is good news.
The not so good news is that our attempt to make up for the fact that peanut butter is Andrew’s favorite food and that peanut butter is a staple food for Philmont to some degree, we tried him on the Cashew Butter. This was largely out of curiosity as for myself, all nuts cause problems to some degree or another. Was the same true for Andrew. It was not going to be good to have him up on the mountain at Philmont and find this out.
He was asking if I missed the foods I could not eat anymore. My initial response was “no.” The truth is that I do, but initially I responded with a fast “no” because I do not miss that pain at all. I want him to understand that there is no amount of pain that is worth going back where I was. I try to avoid it daily as it is. I do not like that pain. It hurts. I also want him to appreciate that I understand that it is hard to miss those items. I get it.
Well he did try the cashew butter. The problem was getting past the flavor. He is not a huge fan of cashews. His comments were, “this tastes like cashews.” Yes, it does. It is cashew butter, after all. No surprise there, right? He does not like almonds so I tried with the lesser of two evils. “This is just different.” Yes, it is. It is not peanut butter. He loves peanut butter. It is that simple.
The problem started less than five minutes after consumption. The symptoms of an impending migraine started. That was quick. With peanut butter we get an hour to two hours before it is full blown. This time it was those weird symptoms that he gets to start within five minutes. I had him take something for the pain that was going to hit him and the preventative (topiramate) right away. You can off-set a migraine if you can get to it fast enough after all. Were we fast enough? That was going to be the question.
His response when it was all said and done and suffering hours later still, “this came on way faster than the peanut butter, but it was not as intense.” I am not sure how to rate that. Better? Worse? About the same? In my book any headache that comes on that fast is worse, it does not matter if the pain is less. Headaches that come on fast are not fun.
So our experiment with cashew butter was a bust for Andrew. No nut butter for him.
I asked him if he got headaches when I made the Banana Nut Muffins. He said sometimes. I rarely make them with the nuts, so we will have to make a batch with the nuts and a batch without the nuts and find out for sure just which is triggering the headaches. My guess is that the “sometimes” is when they had the nuts in them. Unfortunately, it looks like he has got a response to nuts whether we like it or not…
…whether he likes it or not…no peanut butter for him unless he wants to suffer. It does not seem to matter how little he gets because a single peanut butter cup will set him off.
It breaks my heart that he suffers such misery from the food that he loves the most, but alas his genetics dictate that it is the way that it is. He comes from a long line of migraine sufferers. For that I am truly sorry and wish that I could take it all away, but I cannot. We are who we are. We have to love who we are as we are, migraines and all.
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