Tyler Trovato loves his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a glass of milk, but if he diverges from that and a handful of other foods, the 6-year-old goes into a fit of vomiting and lethargy so severe that he has to go to the emergency room.
The St. James, N.Y., first-grader is allergic to just about everything else — chicken, turkey, rice, sweet potatoes and bananas, and more. As an infant, he was even allergic to his mother’s breast milk, and she was a vegetarian.
“He was vomiting — sometimes 15, 20 times,” Jennifer Trovato, 37, told “Good Morning America.” “He would lie there. He was lethargic. I would hold him in my arms, and I just didn’t know what to do. “
Tyler has food protein induced entercolitis syndrome, or FPIES. The allergy does not cause a typical immune response, and therefore is often missed by pediatricians and allergists.
“It’s so upsetting,” said Tyler’s mother. “There’s no words to describe when you see your child so sick like that.”