Landon Schultz celebrated his third birthday in September with a three-foot-tall pirate cake, one made of gold coins, jewels and fishnet, not flour, eggs and chocolate.
The toddler has a disorder known as FPIES and has only been able to eat five foods — strawberries, blueberries, grapes, avocados and peppers. Another 34 foods could send him into fatal shock.
Today, in a big breakthrough in the toddler’s diet, he has been able to add salmon and banana, along with an elemental formula.
His mother, Fallon Schultz, 29, of Howell, N.J., said there is a silver lining to this terrible condition. “In some ways, he has better nutrition than his peers,” she laughs.
But until recently, Schultz was not laughing about her son’s rare disorder, food protein induced enterocolitis syndrome, which took 19 months to properly diagnose and baffles much of the medical world.